“Pregnant?” Close your mouth, Salem.
“About four months, from what I understand.”
“Two people were killed,” Viv said. She flattened her lips.
Sylvia nodded slowly. “Exactly. Tragic.”
My mind spun while I tried to find a cubbyhole in my head to put everything. Tony – the Tony I’d seen yesterday, older and more mature, steady and rock sure in the face of a murder charge, his hysterical mother and his ex-wife showing up after almost a decade – becoming “fond” of the beautiful, wide-smiling Lucinda. Lucinda, who carried a baby.
The question was out of my mouth before I could decide if it was really in my best interest to know. “Was it Tony’s baby?”
“Oh, no, she was in Mexico then. That’s why she came up here, because she wanted a place to raise her baby. Her mother called Josie, and Josie spoke to Tony, and he offered her a job and a place to stay.”
I wiped my hands on my legs. “Sylvia, do you think that’s what happened? That he was in love with her or something? That he was jealous and lost his temper?” As far as I could remember, Tony didn’t have a temper.
That’s what bothered me, I realized. The idea that Tony could have been so hurt that he’d fly into a jealous rage and actually commit a crime of passion. He hadn’t lifted a finger to keep me – his wife, the girl he’d committed to being with for life – from walking out. There were no violent fits of rage, not so much as a stomped foot.
Not that I had wanted Tony to stop me from leaving, but it hurt my ego. Was I choosing to be blind to the possibility that Tony could be passionate, simply because he hadn’t been passionate with me?
“Sweetie, I just don’t know. I know the police wouldn’t charge him unless they had some reason to suspect him. But I also know that if he’s innocent, he’ll be okay.”
Tango pushed his cold wet nose under my hand. Don’t get me wrong, I like dogs or I wouldn’t hang around them so much. But sometimes I really don’t want a cold wet nose sliming around my skin. I scratched his curly ears and he thumped the chair beside me. “I hope you’re right. What about the baby’s father?”
“Who?” Sylvia raised penciled-on eyebrows.
“Lucinda’s baby’s father. Is he back in Mexico?”
Sylvia took a long drink of her tea. “I have no idea. I doubt she knew where he is or even who he was.”
I cast a quick glance over at Viv. Whatever Sylvia said about barely knowing Lucinda, obviously there was no love lost there.
“You didn’t like her,” Viv said. Subtle as a ton of bricks.
“I didn’t know her. I don’t really know what she was like. I just know what I hear and what I see and I’m smart enough to figure out the rest.” Sylvia shifted in her chair.
“If she was the type of person to run around and be wild, then she was likely to have enemies.” I should know. I was as wild as they came and probably a couple dozen people would have been happy to strangle me at some point.
My mind did a quick flash on Trisha and Scott. If something gruesome ever happened to me, I was sure Trisha’s name would turn up on a list of possible suspects.
“We need to make a list of known associates,” Viv said, apparently following my same train of thought and throwing in some lingo she’d picked up from CSI Miami. “If the police have focused in on Tony so soon, it’s possible they’ve ruled out someone else who needs to be looked at more closely.”
Sylvia stood and patted my shoulder. I got the feeling that meant it was time for me to go. “You’re so sweet to want to help Tony. I’m sure he’ll be very touched by it. But I honestly don’t know what you could do. Lucinda had only been here a few months, she didn’t have many friends here. Good luck, Salem. I hope you find something to help Tony.”
“You said Tony had offered her a place to stay. Was it with him?” Quit praying for a negative answer.
Sylvia shrugged. “She stayed with me, actually. I let her use Rey’s old room.”
“You said you barely knew her.” Viv crossed her arms over her chest.
Sylvia gave her a stony look and I wondered briefly if I ought to throw myself between them. Man, two near catfights in the space of an hour. Viv rubbed some people the wrong way.
I waited, though, to see what Sylvia would say. She took her time answering, and when she did she stared straight at me and spoke slowly. I was suddenly reminded that she was Mrs. Solis’s sister. The resemblance was pretty definite in that moment.
“She stayed with me in my extra bedroom. She was quiet and kept mostly to herself. She went to work and she hung out with a few friends and she came home. I appreciate that you want to help Tony, but I don’t see how interrogating his family is going to do him any good.”
I squeezed Sylvia’s arm. “I’m sorry if we’re getting intrusive. Like you said, we just want to help. Forgive us for being nosy.” I narrowed my eyes at Viv, but it was mostly for Sylvia’s benefit.
It was just as well, since it was totally lost on Viv. She continued to size Sylvia up like maybe she’d killed Lucinda and framed Tony for it.
“I’ve got to hit the restroom and then we’ll get out of your hair.” I stood and turned to Viv, handing Stump over to her. “You and Stump can wait in the car.”
Viv started for the door, and Sylvia pointed to a closed door next to her office. I turned that direction, and she said, “No, not that one, that goes down to the basement. The next door.”
I scrubbed the dog saliva off my hands and wondered if Sylvia was testy because she had something to hide, or if Viv was just getting on her nerves. I had been a little intimidated by Viv when I first met her, too. She was one of those people who just looked like they have a lot of money.
I could see how that would rub some people the wrong way, like G-Ma, who’s unceasingly vigilant against anyone who might think they’re better than she is. And maybe Sylvia too?
Or else Sylvia knew more than she was sharing. And while I could understand why she might think it a waste of time to indulge Viv and me in our quest to free Tony, where was the harm?
There was one shred of paper towel on the roll and it wasn’t nearly enough. I opened the cabinet under the sink and rummaged around, my nose filling with a vaguely familiar scent. I knocked over a green cologne bottle and wrinkled my nose as I righted it. Polo by Ralph Lauren. Hello, twelfth grade. Sylvia’s son Rey used to take a bath in Polo every morning before school. You could get high just standing near him.
I found a roll of paper towels and opened it, putting it on the holder in the hopes that the small gesture would undo any damage our questions had done to my relationship with Sylvia. I didn’t want to alienate her. She was my only friendly link to Tony and besides, irritating or not, Tango got me a ten dollar tip every three weeks. I couldn’t afford to make Sylvia mad.
“How is Rey?” I asked when I came out. I sidestepped Tango and reached for the door.
Sylvia was folding towels at a table, and she finished and patted the fabric smooth before she answered. “He’s okay. He’s coming in tonight for Lucinda’s funeral.”
“Tell him I said hi.”
“I will, sweetie.” She reached into her smock pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. It looked like it had been torn off the back of an envelope. “This is Tony’s information. His home and business addresses, phone numbers. You should call him.”
Was it my imagination that she emphasized the word him? Like, “Call him instead of bugging me.”
I wasn’t really comfortable with that. It went against every fiber of my passive-aggressive being.
“Thanks. I’ll do that.”
I joined Viv in the car and sighed as I fastened my seatbelt. Thinking about Rey kind of put me in a bad mood – the slimy creep.
Viv put the car in reverse. “She’s hiding something.”
“I know.” I told her about Rey and the bottle of cologne I’d found in the bathroom. “I’d bet my car that was a fairly new bottle of cologne. I don’t think it was eight or nine months old. But she said it had been that long since she’s seen Rey.”
“So it was Rey who killed that girl and her baby!” Viv slapped the steering wheel.
Okay, so apparently it was up to me to play Devil’s Advocate. “I’m not saying it was Rey. I’m just saying that Sylvia seemed to be hiding something, and I think the something she’s hiding has to do with Rey. I suppose the cologne could be that old. Or it might not even be Rey’s, it could be someone else’s.”
But whatever I had that passed for intuition kept snagging on Rey. Probably it was just me wanting Rey to be guilty because he was such a disgusting jerk. When Tony and I were married, he’d come over to our little house one day while Tony was at school and tried to get me into bed, into Tony’s and my marriage bed, and with me five months pregnant.
I’d been scared and furious at the same time, because Rey was a lot bigger than I was, and the look in his eye had me wondering if he was going to take no for an answer. I yelled at him and called him a slimeball, and wanted to know what kind of person would try to get into bed with their cousin’s wife.
“Come on, Salem. Everybody knows there’s no way you’re not going to screw around on Tony. You are you, after all. I think the whole family would be relieved if it was me you were with, because at least that would keep you from rolling around with half the guys in town.”
Something in his tone or the look in his eye spoke volumes to me. What he had said was true. My promiscuity had been discussed at length and in detail, probably by everyone in the county. I was me, after all. How could I possibly be faithful?
Ten years later I was still somewhat satisfied to remember that I’d clocked Rey right in that smug smile and split his lip. He had come at me with rage in his eyes, and I had run out the front door. He hadn’t followed me far; I had looked back two blocks later and seen him spit blood onto the ground and get into his car, driving off the other way.
I couldn’t have told Tony, because he would have felt so betrayed by Rey and I couldn’t have borne to be the one to do that to him. In the back of my mind was the knowledge that Rey, creep that he was, had only spoken the truth. No one would ever believe that he’d been the one to come on to me. Rey had been a jerk, but I had been a slut, and that was way worse.
We were two blocks from the police station when I realized where Viv was going. “Are we sure we need to do this now?”
“You told him you were coming in, right?”
Coming in. It sounded too close to turned herself in for my comfort. “I don’t think he was serious, though” I said. “I mean, it was more like a suggestion. Probably he would be okay with a phone call. An email.”
“After we get through here,” Viv said, completely ignoring me and turning into the police department parking lot, “let’s find her friends. Sylvia said she had a few, but she didn’t know who they were. Let’s get some names from this cop of yours and see if we can talk to them.”
That didn’t seem like a very good idea to me. I mean, finding her friends wasn’t a bad idea, but using the police to find out didn’t seem like our best bet.
“Maybe we should just talk to Tony. He’d probably know more than the police would, as far as that goes.” I was only marginally more comfortable with the idea of seeing Tony than I was with seeing Bobby.
“Oh, Tony’s on the list – don’t worry about that. But we might as well not go to him empty-handed, right?”
“I guess.” I said a quick prayer that Bobby was out on a case or had gone home to bed with a stomach bug. I doubted God would smite Bobby with a stomach bug just to help me avoid an awkward moment.
I prayed anyway, but as Les was fond of telling me, prayers prayed without faith are basically a lot of hot air.
I lugged Stump up to the same bicycle rack I’d tied her to before, and she craned her neck around to glare up at me. This time she didn’t bother with the dramatics, she just stared stonily at me, and I could practically see a list of my favorite things that she was planning to shred in retribution.
Bobby was walking by the reception area and saw us as soon as we came through the door.
“There she is,” he said.
“Is that your ex-boyfriend? You’re right, he is a hottie,” Viv stage-whispered.
Bobby lifted an eyebrow at me.
“I never said that,” I said quickly. “She’s old and doesn’t hear very well.”
“You never said which? That I was your boyfriend or that I was a hottie?” He folded arms across a well-muscled chest.
“I – I, uh…mmmm…” Now see, this was why I didn’t want to see Bobby.
Viv stuck her hand out. “Detective Sloan, my name is Vivian Carson and, of course, you know my partner Salem Grimes. We’re investigating the Lucinda Cruz murder.” She raised her wobbly chin and spoke with authority. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Bobby burst out laughing. “All right, Cagney and Lacey. Come on back.” His shoulders shook as he led us down the hallway to his office.
Viv sat in the chair I’d been in Monday and faced Bobby across his desk. From the way her jaw twitched, I figured the Cagney and Lacey remark hadn’t set too well with her. She took a deep breath, though, and smiled. “I acknowledge that we are new to this arena, and I can imagine you see little advantage in helping us, so I want to assure you right away that have not come empty handed. We have information to trade.”
Bobby did a poor job of hiding his grin. “Is that so?”
“It is so. We’ve been conducting interviews and we have a few persons of interest.” Viv folded her hands over her three hundred dollar purse.
Bobby leaned back in his chair. “Now, that is interesting.”
Viv gave him an indulgent smile. “Of course, we want to help in every way, and we’re more than willing to share what we have. On the condition the favor is returned.”
Bobby rubbed his upper lip hard, then took a deep breath of his own. “The police department is always indebted to active and concerned citizens. As I’m sure you can understand, we can’t be everywhere all the time, so we rely on people like yourselves to assist us in gathering information. I will gladly listen to every concern and thought you have, and I promise every lead will be followed up on.”
Viv and I both waited for the “but.”
“But I can’t comment on an open investigation.”
“It would be strictly off the record, of course.” Viv leaned forward in her chair.
Bobby fiddled with a manila folder on his desk and slid his gaze over to me. As he slid the folder into the top drawer of his desk he lifted one eyebrow as if to ask, “Where did you come up with this one?”
I quickly decided there was nothing I could do or say that would make this episode any less humiliating. I shrugged slightly and looked at Viv as if I didn’t know what she was talking about.
Viv, bless her heart, appeared to be actually waiting patiently for the police detective to spill his guts to two amateur – in every sense of the word – detectives.
“You know, I think it would be extremely helpful to hear your thoughts on this investigation. You strike me as a very wise person.” Bobby finally said. “I’d be willing to bet you’re one of those people who can size up a character in no time.”
Viv shrugged modestly. “Well, I don’t like to brag, but I am an excellent judge of character.”
“Intuition is one of the most powerful tools we have to work with. And a mature woman such as yourself has probably honed her intuition through years of experience.”
“Exactly.” Viv bobbed her head. “There is no substitute for experience, is there? In fact, I would dare say…” She trailed off and rubbed her chest. She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, like a guppy scooped out of its tank. Her face flushed, then paled. “Excuse me,” she croaked.
I grabbed her arm. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, still pale and now shaking. “I’m fine, I’m fine. I just feel a little fluttery.”
Bobby stood. “Fluttery?”
Viv shook her head. “It’s nothing, I’m sure. I just –” She stopped again and took a couple of quick breaths. “I need my heart pills.”
I didn’t even know she took heart pills. I grabbed her purse and was about to start rifling through there.
“No, no, they’re in the car.” She stuck her hand in the purse and clutched a ring of keys. “Detective Sloan, please be so kind as to fetch my pills from the glove compartment of my car. It’s a powder blue Deville.”
“I can get them,” I said. God, please don’t let her have a heart attack here, I prayed.
Viv turned achingly frightened, watery eyes on me. “No, please stay here. Please stay with me,” she whispered. “Please.”
Bobby grabbed the keys and hurried out the door. I fought the terrified pounding of my heart and the tears that rose suddenly. “You’ll be okay,” I said fiercely. “You’re going to be fine.”
Viv blinked a couple of times, then shot to her feet. “That arrogant little jerkweed. Can you believe him? Using transparent flattery to try and get us out of his hair.” She rushed around his desk and slid the drawer open. “And he called me old! What a dipstick.”
She slapped the folder onto Bobby’s desk and opened it.
“Viv!” What the heck was she doing? I jumped up and ran to the door. “Are you insane? You’ll get us arrested!”
“A mature woman with years of experience.” Her wrinkled mouth pursed and her head wobbled as she mocked Bobby. “What a putz. Let’s see what we have here.”
“You can’t do this.” I did a little dance from one foot to the other, torn between getting help – which would undoubtedly only make things worse for me, since I’d been the one to bring her in there in the first place – and throttling her.
“Oh yes I ca-an,” Viv sing-songed. She rifled through pages in the file. “I knew this was Lucinda Cruz’s file. Did you see the way he slid this into the drawer, as if letting us even look at the outside of the folder was too much for him? Selfish. Wants all the glory for himself.” She mumbled to herself as she eyed whatever was inside the folder. “Blunt force trauma to the head. Mmmmhhhmmm. I see.”
“Viv!” I hissed. “Put it back. Bobby will be back any second.”
“Damn straight I’m a good judge of character.” She flipped through a couple more pages. “I can tell, for instance, when someone’s trying to blow smoke up my –”
“Viv!” I heard voices approaching. “Someone’s coming!”
She had the file back in the drawer and her head between her knees so fast I barely caught it. One second she was there, the next she was hidden behind the desk. Two uniform cops walked down the hallway and looked at me. I froze, unsure what I was supposed to do. Act like everything was normal? Were we still pretending Viv was having a heart attack?
Good thing for me Viv was on top of things. She moaned and sat up straight, one hand to her chest and the other patting her cheek. “Okay, okay. I think it’s passed.” She stood and moved back to the front of the desk, leaning against it and breathing hard. Her face was flushed and even a little sweaty. How did she do that?
Bobby rounded the corner, a bottle of pills in his hand. “This is all I could find.”
“That’s perfect, thank you.” Viv popped the top and flipped a tiny white pill in her mouth. “I think it’s passed, but the doctor told me if I felt fluttery to go ahead and take the pill just in case.”
Bobby took Viv’s wrist in one hand and felt her pulse. “Let’s call an ambulance, just in case.”
“I’m sure that’s not necessary, but I’ll defer to your judgment.” Viv turned worshipful eyes on him and waited while Bobby counted heartbeats.
“Salem, could you grab Mrs. Carson a cup of water from that cooler around the corner? Why don’t you sit back down and lift your feet?”
“Okay.” Viv drifted weakly into the chair. “Really, I think I’m fine. But whatever you think is best…”
I decided maybe I needed a little white pill. My hands shook as I let the water into the paper cup and I spilled it all over the floor. If Bobby was in there taking her pulse, surely he would figure out she was faking it. And there would only be one reason for her to fake that – to do exactly what she’d done.
He would put two and two together and pretty soon we’d be in a windowless back room while Bobby and a partner played good cop and bad cop.
There was a time in my life when I might have been able to stand up under interrogation; that was during the time when I stayed in a permanent but variable state of inebriation. Now I was stone cold sober and cried during sentimental car commercials. I was ready to spill my guts as soon as I walked through the door, and I didn’t even have that many guts…metaphorically speaking, of course.
Viv was on her cell phone talking to her “doctor” when I got back. “Okay, we’ll be right there. Yes, yes of course.” She nodded a few times and then flipped it closed. “He said that everything sounded fine but he wanted to see me this afternoon just to be on the safe side. Definitely no need to send the ambulance, though.”
Bobby turned to me. “Can you drive her to her doctor’s office?”
And get the heck out of here? “Sure.” I nodded and shoved the half-empty cup at Viv. “Be happy to.”
Viv milked the sympathy for a couple more minutes and then clung to my arm as I led her down the hallway.
When Stump saw me, she jumped up and wagged her back end before she remembered she was mad at me and flopped back down. Viv leaned on the bike rack and breathed dramatically deeply while I unhooked Stump.
My own pulse was getting back to normal, and mad as I was, I was mostly relieved it looked like we were going to make it. As soon as we got in the car, though, I let her have it.
“How dare you put me in that position? First of all, I thought you were honestly having a heart attack. You scared me half to death.” I dumped Stump onto the seat between us and started the car.
“I am a classically trained actress, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know, and that was…it was cruel. I thought you were really sick.” And I believed you desperately wanted me by your side in your hour of need. “You could have gotten me into serious, serious trouble by pulling that file out. I’m on probation, you know. I’d go to real jail.”
Viv waved a hand. “It’s not that bad. I suppose you ought to drive, just in case he’s watching.”
I decided I would throttle her as soon as I was far enough away from all the police witnesses.
“I wish you had a little cooler head. I could have gotten more information out of that file besides “blunt force trauma” and “St. Christian.”
“St. Christian? What does that mean?”
“Beats me. I didn’t get a good look at it because you were having such a conniption. Watch out for that pickup!”
“What?” I swerved and honked out of reflex, then realized the pickup she was talking about was twenty yards away. “That?”
“You were headed straight for him.”
“I was not. Geez, Viv, you’ve given me fifteen heart attacks today. Can we give it a rest?”
“I’m sorry, but frankly you’re not the best driver in the world.”
I pulled into Sonic and ordered a large vanilla Coke for me and a chocolate malt for Viv. “You can drive now. We’re safely away from the police station.”
She got behind the wheel and smiled. “There now. That was kind of fun, don’t you think? Pulling one over on the guy who’s supposed to have all the answers?”
“No, it was fraudulent and wrong and mean, and it didn’t get us anywhere.” St. Christian – that didn’t even make sense. There wasn’t a St. Christian, was there? I mean, weren’t all saints Christians? Wasn’t that some sort of prerequisite? “What did it say about St. Christian?”
“I don’t know, I told you. I just saw those words and then you started crying and I closed the file.”
“I wasn’t crying, I was trying to keep us from being arrested. Maybe it was St. Christina. Is there a St. Christina?” And what would that have to do with Lucinda Cruz and Tony?
The girl brought my forty-four ounce vanilla Coke and I slurped down a good eight ounces of it. “Hey! Could it have been St. Christopher?”
Viv sucked on her chocolate malt so hard her eyes bugged. “Could be. It was St. Something-or-other.” She gasped and sat back. “Oh no. Brain freeze, brain freeze.”
Stump wagged at both of us hopefully, and I opened the lid to my drink and took out a piece of ice. She chomped it down noisily.
“Tony always wore a necklace with a St. Christopher medallion on it. I wonder if that’s what you saw.”
Viv moaned and rolled her head back and forth on the headrest.
“Maybe his necklace was found at the scene of the crime or something.”
“Maybe she was strangled with his necklace!” Viv raised up, then let her head fall back. She listlessly spooned malt into her mouth, her eyes closed. “This is what you call painfully good.”
“Except that wouldn’t be a blunt force trauma to the head, would it?” I shivered when I realized how casually we were discussing the death of a young woman and her baby.
“You have a brain freeze, too?”
“No, just thinking about Lucinda Cruz.” And her crooked neck. If she’d died from blunt force trauma to the head, why had her neck looked like that?
“Was that an autopsy report you saw first? That had the blunt force trauma thing on it?”
Viv shrugged, spooning in more malt. “No idea. It was a form with a bunch of blanks filled in.”
I almost said I wished she’d gotten a closer look, but figured she would throw her malt at me.
Viv started the engine. “It’s too hot to be sitting in this car without the air conditioner running. Okay, our next stop has to be your husband’s house.”
I whipped my head around. “It does?”
“Of course. We have to find out if he has his St. Christina necklace.”
“St. Christopher.” I had prayed that morning for some guidance. Now Viv and Sylvia both said I needed to see Tony. I’d secretly been hoping the Holy Spirit would guide me to a smoking gun with little effort and no awkwardness.
They were both right. If I wanted to do anything for Tony, I should actually talk to the guy, but talking to him would probably lead us to the subject of whether or not we were still married, and that was something I wasn’t too keen on discussing just yet.
“Where am I going?” Viv asked as she got to the street.
I dug through my purse and found the addresses Sylvia had written down. “Home or office first?” I wondered out loud.
“Home. If I was arrested for murder I would call in sick the next couple days.”
“Work, then. Tony would go to work as long as he had a pulse.”
Tony’s office was on the edge of town, in the industrial district. White vans with blue and green Solis Services logos lined up neatly outside large garage doors, and an SUV and a nice sedan sat in front of a windowless door.
“Oh, it looks like he’s got company,” I said, grateful for an excuse to put this off.
Viv was out the door before I finished the sentence. Good thing, I supposed, that one of us wasn’t shy. Any crime-solving duo needed at least one person who wasn’t a total chicken.
Viv rapped on the door, then stuck her head in.
Tony appeared almost immediately, his polite expression replaced by one of surprise when he saw me. He smiled. “Salem. What are you doing here?”
“We’re investigating your case,” Viv announced. “We have a couple of leads, and we’d like to talk to you about them.”
A prematurely bald man in a suit popped his head over Tony’s shoulder. “You’re investigating his case?” He looked at me, at Stump, then up at Tony and cocked an eyebrow.
Tony stepped back and gestured for us to come in. “This is my attorney, Craig Pharr. We were just discussing my case. Come on in.”
He led us through an outer reception area and into a large office. The place was nice, and whoever decorated it had done a good job of disguising the fact that we were in the middle of a bunch of warehouses. It had thick mint green carpet, creamy vanilla walls, and expensive looking furniture. I placed Stump strategically over the refried bean stain on my shirt and followed them into the inner sanctum.
“Salem is my wife,” Tony said, his face completely impassive, as if it was routine fo