Land of Careful Shadows (16 page)

“What time?”

“That, I don't know. I have a regular tennis match on Sundays. My husband tries to get in a round of golf if it's warm enough. We usually grab lunch and dinner out. We probably weren't even home when she left. The property is alarmed. She could have come and gone with just a punch of the alarm code.”

“Did she give you any idea where she was going?”

“Sundays, when it was warm enough, she usually met up with her boyfriend.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Only his first name: Rodrigo.”

Vega felt a pulse of electricity surge through his body.

“And she was seeing this Rodrigo—in March?”

“To my knowledge. I think they were apart for a while, but then they got back together.”

Another pulse of current. Morales had lied. He hadn't broken off the relationship after they arrived. It was still going strong right up until she disappeared. That lie and the time frame had just ratcheted him up from a person of interest to a suspect. “If I brought you a picture of Rodrigo, do you think you could identify him?”

“I think so,” said Cindy. “He mowed my lawn here a few times but it's not like he had a car and picked her up here on a regular basis. I think they walked to some central point to meet each other.”

“Did you see Rodrigo the day she disappeared?”

“No. I just remember Maria saying she was going to meet up with him.”

“Do you know where they went? What they planned to do?”

“I didn't ask.” She seemed to feel the heat of Vega's gaze upon her. “You think I should have reported her missing, don't you?”

“I think somebody should have. You could have told the cops what you're telling me right now—even left out the theft part if you'd wanted.”

“I just—I didn't know enough about her situation to get involved. If it helps at all, I boxed up all her things. I kept thinking I should give them to La Casa but I never got around to it.”

“Her things?”
Jackpot.

“They're in the basement. You're welcome to take the whole box if you want.”

Vega followed Cindy to a door on the other side of the pantry. She flicked on a light and led him down an unpainted set of wooden stairs. In a corner, next to a broken skateboard, sat a large cardboard box that had already developed a fine layer of dust along the top. She looked at her watch.

“Do you mind if I leave you down here? My luncheon is starting in a few minutes.”

“That's fine. I'll probably be back at some point later today and have you ID a photo of Rodrigo.” Vega would have to use Morales's arrest shot in Rhode Island. Nobody could ID him the way he looked right now.

Cindy went upstairs and left Vega in the basement. He could have taken the box back to the station house and gone through it there. But Vega wanted to see the contents first. He found a set of latex gloves in his pocket and slipped into them so he didn't contaminate anything with prints. Then he opened the box.

Maria's possessions didn't amount to much. A few modest shirts and jeans. Some underwear and socks. A sweatshirt with I LOVE NY written across it. A pair of cheap silver-colored sling-back sandals. Vega had to remind himself that she probably crossed the border with only the clothes on her back.

Everything in the box smelled musty. But even after weeks in the basement, Vega could still smell something of the woman on her clothes—a whiff of lavender from her shampoo. The vanilla moisturizer she rubbed on her skin. She was here—more alive in this box than she had ever seemed when Vega read the autopsy reports. For a moment, he could almost picture her with Morales—the way he'd stood up to the police for her, the way she'd dragged him to that pocket of air in that sweltering boxcar to save his life. Could all that have ended in one brutal moment? Vega would have liked to think not, but he had only to look at the love and hate he felt for Wendy to know that those two emotions were too closely linked to easily uncouple.

Overhead, Vega could hear a rumble of heels on the polished floors, the over-animated chatter of overindulged women. He didn't feel like walking the gauntlet past them with a dusty box from the basement. They'd probably assume he was here to fix the boiler.

He dug through the box a little more until he came to a plastic bag. Inside he found a stuffed pink rabbit holding an Easter egg along with a silver-colored bracelet with three charms clipped to it: a lollipop, ballet slippers, and a teddy bear. Both were clearly presents for a child. Vega was beginning to believe Maria's daughter was in Guatemala. He pictured a little girl in some rural backwater village waiting for word from her mother that would never come while her presents grew musty and old sitting in this rich white woman's basement.

There were no sales receipts, no way to know exactly when the items were purchased or how old the recipient was. Hell, with girls, you never knew. Vega remembered Joy loving her stuffed animals to death when she was three or four. But she was almost eighteen now and she still had two or three she kept on her bed. Last year, when Vega took her to a local carnival, she'd begged him to win her a stuffed bear by knocking down a stack of weighted bottles. Twenty bucks later, he'd managed to secure that five-dollar bear.

He was about to close up the contents for the police station when something at the bottom of the box caught his eye. It was sticking out of one of the pockets of a yellow hoodie. An envelope. He teased it out of the pocket. It was addressed to
Maria Elena c/o Cindy Klein, 43 Apple Ridge Dr., Lake Holy, NY, USA.

Vega noticed that the town was misspelled “Lake Holy,” not “Lake Holly.” The return address was from a woman in Aguas Calientes, Guatemala: Irma Alvarez-Santos. The print was uneven and each letter looked as if it had been painstakingly scrawled. The top of the envelope had been ripped open. The letter inside was just a few short lines that looked as if they'd been scribbled in a third-grader's handwriting. Vega was not used to translating written Spanish, but if he went slowly, he could make out the meaning:

Vega went through the translation in his head three times. He was sure he had the words right. Irma Alvarez-Santos had signed the letter “Mami.” She was Maria Elena's mother. That meant, in all likelihood, some part of Maria Elena's name, even if she was married, was Santos. They had a possible last name now. They had a cell phone number. And they had an address of the next of kin. A simple cross-check of ICE's database might be able to fill in the blanks on her identity. At least they'd be able to contact her mother and let her know what had happened to her daughter. It was sad news and, unfortunately, Vega was the one who was going to have to deliver it. But at least the family would have some closure.

But a question now haunted him: What longing was Maria's mother referring to? Unless Vega had screwed up the translation, it sounded as if Maria hadn't come to Lake Holly, as Morales had said, just because she thought it was “safe.” She'd come to ease some longing.

Vega was sweating by the time he lugged the box up the basement stairs, out the garage, and toward his truck on the street. There were cars parked along Cindy Klein's driveway and a gaggle of women walking up to her front door armed with flowers and small, delicate bags of gifts that seemed like a waste of time for a woman who clearly had everything. Vega avoided making eye contact with the women and they did the same. He was invisible to them. A workman. But he could not escape the three women walking straight toward him on the driveway. Skinny jeans. Large, dark sunglasses. Long, keratin-treated hair blow-dried to perfection and the sort of understated but expensive jewelry that would rival the GDP of a developing nation.

The woman in the middle was Wendy.

Vega put the carton down on the driveway and wiped his hands down his dark blue trousers. Normally he tried to avoid such encounters. But not today.

She was like the others of course. Well read. Well bred. Underfed. But there had always been something a little different about Wendy. The way her eyes crinkled with genuine warmth when she smiled. The way she pushed her lip out, little-girl-like, when something troubled her. She could freeze you out faster than a nor'easter in January. But when you were in Wendy's good graces, there was something almost celestial about the experience. You felt lit from within, warm and glowing. You felt like a better person somehow, like she set the benchmark and all you had to do was rise to the occasion.

She didn't look at him that way anymore and though he accepted it, he could never say it stopped hurting.

Wendy told the other two women she'd meet them inside and walked up to Vega, the heels of her leather boots clicking on the driveway. She lifted her sunglasses and looked him up and down. She sighed as if his plan had always been to screw up her day.

“What are you doing here, Jimmy?”

“My job.”

“Moving boxes?”

“It's part of a police investigation.”

“You're investigating Cindy Klein?” She waited for more but he didn't offer it. He wouldn't have even if they'd still been married. It was one of the first things he'd learned as a cop, not to talk about cases in progress. So he changed the subject.

“I thought you worked on Tuesdays,” he said.

“Not since the school budget cuts.” Up close, she looked tired, the skin beneath her hazel eyes bruised from lack of sleep. Makeup only hid so much. “I know you've been calling me,” she said finally.

“Then how about you answer for a change?”

“Because it's not a conversation I want to have over the phone.”

“Hey.” He spread his hands. “I'm not
on
the phone.”

Wendy made a face. “Not here. I'm late enough as it is.”

“All right. How about in an hour or two?”

“Benjy has a doctor's appointment at one forty-five.”

“How about after?”

“Sammy has karate at three-thirty.”

“Qué coño, Wendy?”
Vega kicked the Belgian-block curb of the driveway. He couldn't contain himself. “Joy has blown off her internship with Dr. Feldman. She's failing school. I caught her crying in front of Kenny's house the other night. You mean to tell me little Benjy's fucking karate lesson is more important?”

Wendy flared her eyes at him. “It's Sammy—”

“—Whatever—” He couldn't tell the twins apart and didn't want to.

“—And you don't have to curse, Jimmy. In English
or
Spanish. I'm not one of your foul-mouthed colleagues.”

Vega shoved his hands in his pockets. He wasn't just embarrassing her. He was embarrassing himself, playing to all the class distinctions he'd always railed against. “I'm just worried is all.”

“We are addressing the situation already.”

“
We?
Who's
we?
”

“Joy. Myself—Alan.”

“Alan doesn't get any say in this. She's my kid.”

“Then maybe you should get to know her better. If you did, you'd know this has nothing to do with Kenny who, by the way, she's still seeing.”

“Then order her to break it off. He's a bad influence on her if they're both failing school.”

“Her therapist says—”

“—Ah Christ, Wendy!” Vega kicked the curb again.

“You sent her to a therapist?”
Therapy:
his ex-wife's answer to everything, except, oddly enough, their marriage. That she just ended without consulting any touchy-feely authorities on the subject.

“I didn't ask you to foot the bill,” she countered.

“You didn't ask me
anything.
”

“Joy was having nightmares. I thought it might help her. Adolescents are very egocentric at this age. The developing frontal lobes of the brain aren't mature enough to—”

Vega cut her off. He wasn't in the mood to hear his daughter dissected like a science project. “—She doesn't need to talk to a therapist. She needs to talk to
us.
Amherst is going to take away her scholarship if she keeps this up. Hell, things get bad enough she may not even graduate high school. If this is over some boy—”

“—I'm pretty sure it's not.”

“Then what is it? I'll do anything, Wendy. Just tell me how to make her better and I'll do it.”

“I don't know.” A sudden gust of wind coursed down the driveway and Wendy turned away from it. Her long, chestnut hair flew across her face and she raked it back. She folded her arms across her chest to fight off the cold but she was so narrow and her arms so long, that there just didn't seem to be enough of her to grab on to. She looked lost and frightened and for a moment Vega had the urge to take her in his arms, brush aside that hair, and comfort her even if he had no words of comfort.

“I have to go, Jimmy,” she said, not unkindly. “They're waiting for me inside.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Alan and I are taking the kids to dinner tomorrow night at that hibachi steak house in town. You know the one.”

Yep, Vega knew it. It had been a five and dime when he was a boy. He checked out the restaurant menu once when he and Joy were looking for a place to eat. Their cheapest entrée was twenty-five bucks. He took Joy for pizza instead. She sulked through the entire meal, which really irked him considering how often she made Kenny's impoverished state sound almost heroic. It was one thing to deal with your boyfriend's economic limitations he supposed, and quite another when they were your dad's.