A Blossom of Bright Light (7 page)

It was one of those “make your own book” photo albums. On the laminated cover was a picture of a young, brown-skinned woman with the blond baby on her lap and the two other Reilly children on each side. The girl, Kayla, was giggling, and the woman looked like she was about to start giggling herself. Vega could see from the look on both their faces that this wasn't scripted. He thumbed through the pages and saw dozens of similar shots that showed the progression of time through Dominga's ever-increasing pregnancy and the children's growth. But in all the shots, Dominga looked happy. So what happened?

“You didn't give this to her?”

“I'd planned to send it once she settled in. I was hoping to bring the kids to visit her sometime. After that call—I didn't know what to do.”

Karen handed Vega something else from inside the drawer: a printout of the original Craigslist ad with an address and phone number scrawled at the bottom. The ad read:
Seeking live-in companion/caregiver for elderly woman in Wickford. Some light housekeeping and cooking. References required. Competitive salary.

“Out of curiosity, do you know how competitive the salary was?” asked Vega.

“A thousand a week. A big jump from what I could pay her,” Karen admitted. “But Dominga was pretty much expected to be available to Mrs. Davies around the clock except for Sunday afternoons, when her son visited. Dominga said that was fine right now because she'd be tied down with the baby anyway. Also, the um—baby's father—was out of her life.”

“He dumped her?”

“He was married. In Guatemala. I don't think he was looking to start another family up here. Bob and I wanted to help her get some money from this guy through the courts, but she seemed uncomfortable with the idea, so we just backed off. She was almost twenty-six. We didn't want to meddle in her affairs.”

“You know the father's name?”

“Esteban. Esteban Ovillo. He's a mechanic over at the muffler dealership.”

Vega copied down Ovillo's name. “Mind if I keep this ad and contact information for Mrs. Davies?”

“Are you going to visit Dominga?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Karen pressed the picture book into Vega's hands. “Can you give her this?
Please?
Maybe she might just—I don't know—call us sometime?”

Vega took the book. “I'll see what I can do.”

 

Vega checked his cell phone as soon as he left the Reillys. He had a text from Adele.

If it was about the investigation, he couldn't talk. If it was about anything else, he wasn't sure he wanted to. What was he supposed to say?
Sure, leave me and go off to D.C.?

Adele was his first real relationship since Wendy, perhaps his first real relationship as an adult if you consider that he was barely twenty-three when Wendy came into his life. Adele was more than a girlfriend; she was his best friend. She knew all the names and quirks of the guys he worked with. She could sing (badly, but he never told her that) all the songs he performed with his band. She'd heard every story of his childhood in the South Bronx, from the foul-mouthed parrot that lived in the tenement apartment above him to the time he and Henry Lopez stole and ate Mrs. Clemente's
arroz con gandules
from her fire escape. (Vega swore he still had the rubber-sandal marks from the beating his grandmother administered with her
chancletas
afterward.)

Vega and Adele shared a whole arsenal of inside jokes that often sent them into hysterics with one word or look. When he made love to her, it was with his heart and soul, not just his body. He looked at no other woman. He desired no other woman. How could she throw all that away?

He put the call through and waited for her breathy hello.

“Hey,” he choked out. His throat felt tight. His palms began to sweat. He couldn't even say her name.

“I was wondering when you'd call me back,” she said. “The phone's been ringing off the hook.”

“I'll bet.”

“So what's going on?”

You first,
he was thinking. But instead he said, “You know I can't tell you anything about the investigation.”

“Not anything?”

“Adele—”

“It's just that—God, Jimmy—I feel terrible.”

He didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing.

“You don't feel bad?” she asked him.

“Of course I feel bad.”

“You never show it.”

“You never show things, either.”

They were both silent for a moment, each waiting for the other to speak. “Where are you?” she asked finally.

“Still in Lake Holly.”

“You want to stop by?”

No.
Better to deal with this over the phone. Quick and dirty. Wendy broke the news that she was leaving him over dinner at their favorite restaurant. He never ate there again.

“I'm beat, Adele. I've got a forty-five-minute drive ahead of me. If there's something you want to say to me, say it now.”

She sighed. “I wanted to tell you in person.”

He waited, acutely aware of every sensation: the way his truck's vinyl seats felt like cold, dead skin to the touch, the jarring rattle of someone fitting a tin lid on their trash can. Life went on all around him. He wrapped a hand around the steering wheel and studied the cold spill of streetlight through his windshield, the way it cast shadows on his knuckles. He flexed and unflexed his hand. If there was something—or someone—he could hit right now, he would.

“Okay. Look, Jimmy,” Adele said slowly. “Since you won't come over, there's something you should know.”

Chapter 9

V
ega waited. He could feel his breath balling up in his chest with anticipation.
Steve Schulman has offered me a job. I'm moving to D.C.
Two sentences and it would all be over. Other guys, they'd go out afterward and drown their sorrows over a beer with friends. But how do you do that when your girl is also your best friend?

Maybe it was because his dad walked out when he was two, but Vega never felt the burning urge for male companionship that other men did. As a small child, he loved hanging out in his mother's kitchen, watching her deep-fry
alcapurrias
—meat fritters—while his grandmother taught him how to salsa to the scratchy eight-tracks she used to pick up over on Tremont Avenue.

After his grandmother died when he was eleven, Vega and his mother moved north to suburban Lake Holly, where he stuck out as the token minority in a sea of Irish and Italian faces. He was a good baseball player—always a litmus test of friendship among boys—and his skills earned him a degree of acceptance and respect from other boys in town. But he never hungered to compete and ended up more comfortable behind a guitar than in a dugout.

His career as a police officer should have remedied all that. Most cops had a truckload of fellow-cop buddies. But Vega wasn't the sort who spent his off hours drinking or fishing or watching ball games with other men. And even though he loved getting together with his band, Armado (Spanish for “armed”—they were all in law enforcement), his relationships with the men never went deeper than their shared love of playing music. Adele was the one he told his troubles to, the one whose advice he sought. She was his gravitational center. Without her, he felt weightless and out of kilter. And so he braced himself like a condemned man before a judge for whatever she had to say now.

“Have you found Zambo yet?” she asked him.

“Uh, no.” He couldn't see what this had to do with her going to D.C. “The Lake Holly PD is still looking for him.”

“I was in Claudia's today,” she began. “You know Claudia Aguilar? The lady who owns the little bodega around the corner from me?”

“Uh-huh.” She'd lost him. Completely. He could follow any map but a woman's train of thought.

“I ran into Esmeralda Gonzalez, Charlie's wife? She works with the homeless in town through her church, so I asked her if she'd seen Zambo. She said Zambo told her he was going back to Guatemala. She thinks he already left.”

Vega waited for more.

“Did you hear what I just said, Jimmy?”

“I heard.”

“You seem—I don't know—distracted.”

No shit.
“Esme Gonzalez thinks Zambo's in Guatemala. So?”

“But if he is—”

“If he is, then I'm the pope.”

“It's worth checking out.”

“Checking out how, Adele? Calling the Guatemalan Embassy? The guy's probably passed out in Michael Park somewhere. The PD will find him.”

Silence. She sucked in her breath. “You're always so sure.”

“Now you're going to tell me how to do my job?”

“You tell me often enough how to do mine!”

Vega flicked the heater vents in the truck. Should he ask about Schulman?
No
. Pride wouldn't let him. So he said simply, “Is that it?”

“What do you mean, ‘Is that it?' ”

“Is that all you wanted to tell me?”

“Boy, you're just the soul of compassion this evening. Do you realize that not once—
not once
—have you said you're sorry for talking me out of going to see Zambo last night?”

“And what would that change? Would that change
anything?
”

“Maybe just . . .” Her voice trailed off. Vega waited. “You never rented that tuxedo.”

They were talking about a dead baby, and now she wants to talk about a freakin' suit?
Vega would never understand women.

“I've been busy.”

“Umm.” There was a heaviness to her voice, a slow grind of gears. Vega felt her weighing what she should say and what she could hold off on until another day. And that's when it hit him: she'd been doing the same thing for weeks now. He'd been a fool not to see it coming.

“Get some sleep, all right?” Adele said finally. “We're both exhausted.” She hung up, and all the way home Vega's words echoed in his head:
What would that change? Would that change anything?
And he knew what he should have said—what he should have realized weeks ago. The obvious answer:

Monday morning. Valley Formal Wear. The empty waiting area had benches tufted in black velvet and a three-paneled mirror that made Jimmy Vega feel like he was staring at his reflection in a fun-house arcade and every angle was bad. He had thirty-five minutes before he had to meet with the medical examiner. That should be enough time, shouldn't it?

“What sort of tuxedo would you like to rent?” asked the blond salesman with the prep-school accent. “Single-breasted? Double-breasted?”

“Single-breasted, I guess.”

“Peaked lapels? Or notched?”

“I wouldn't know a peak from a notch,” Vega admitted. “Whatever's black, basic, and reasonable.”

“When do you need it by?”

“Uh, Saturday, I guess.”

“You
guess?
”

“I'm not sure I'm still going.”

“Please tell me you're not getting married.”

Vega allowed a smile. “No. Nothing like that. It's a political fund-raiser. I just don't know if I want to go at this point or if I'm even still invited.”

The man raked his fingers through a spray of stiff bangs and ran his eyes across Vega's faded black polo shirt, off-the-rack sports jacket, and chinos. They seemed to tell him everything he needed to know about Vega's fashion sense. “You're cutting it close as it is. We charge a twenty-dollar rush fee if you want to rent in under fourteen days, plus an additional twenty-dollar deposit that you'll forfeit if you cancel.”

“So it's gonna cost me forty bucks if I don't go?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“And what's the fare if I do?”

“That depends on what you choose, but something in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty.”

“How fast can you pull an outfit together?” Vega checked his watch. “I'm kind of in a hurry.”

“Then perhaps you should consider painting tails on a T-shirt, hmmm?”

Maybe it was the smolder in Vega's eyes or the holstered gun that was apparent as Vega slipped out of his jacket, but the salesman's accent went from Harvard to Hoboken in seconds flat. “Let me take some measurements and see what I can do,” he mumbled.

The salesman took his measurements and left Vega in a dressing cubicle while he disappeared in back to see what he could find. Vega's phone dinged with a text. Louis Greco. Vega had passed along Adele's information about Zambo to Greco last night. Vega was hoping she was wrong.

Still looking for Zambo
, texted Greco
. Nobody saw him around last night. Could Adele be right?

Keep looking,
Vega texted back.
$50 says he's not in Guatemala.

The salesman emerged from the back room and inserted something wrapped in plastic through the curtain. He seemed to have relocated his New England boarding school accent in the back room as well.

“I'm afraid we don't have any black tuxedos available in your size right now. But we have a very fashionable royal blue one with a shawl collar.”

Vega held up the garment bag. “What's a shawl collar?” He pictured one of those granny square blankets that people drape over couches. It didn't sound flattering.

“A style lots of celebrities wear. Ryan Gosling wore a tux very similar to this at the Academy Awards last year.”

Vega didn't want to admit he didn't know who Ryan Gosling was and never watched the Academy Awards, so he just grunted as he unwrapped the tuxedo from the plastic. The blue was less Hollywood and more Sesame Street. Vega could have doubled as Cookie Monster's well-dressed brother.

“You don't have anything else?”

“Nothing that's remotely in your size on such short notice.”

Vega was five-foot-ten and a hundred and sixty pounds, lean and muscular. So much for all the stuff he kept hearing about Americans getting fatter. The guys renting tuxedos definitely weren't.

“But I need a black tuxedo.”

“It has a black satin collar and a black stripe down each leg.”

The stripe looked silly to Vega, like he was a doorman or the tuba player in a high school marching band. He started to try it on and then stopped.
No.
This was ridiculous. Who was he kidding? Adele was leaving him, and he was renting a tux for the occasion? He wrapped the tuxedo back in the plastic and handed it through the curtain.

“I can't do this. I'm sorry,” said Vega.

“You're not renting the tux?”

“I'm not attending the event.” He was going to have to start getting used to a life without Adele. Might as well start now.

 

The medical examiner's office was a small and unassuming building tucked away in a corner of the state medical college's campus. Outside, the building looked like a maintenance facility. The windows were cut high into the beige concrete. A curtain of asphalt surrounded it. On the roof, there was a collection of tall vents, shafts, and air systems that added to the sense that the building's purpose was purely to power other facilities on campus.

Inside, however, was another matter. The waiting area resembled the lobby of a Holiday Inn. There were skylights, greenhouse plants, and a cheerful receptionist who welcomed Vega as if she had no idea that the only people who checked into this place didn't do so of their own accord.

As a cop, Vega had seen so many gruesome deaths, most no longer bothered him. But a baby or young child's always stayed with him. He could never be objective when it came to children. He didn't know if that made him better at his job—or worse.

The only thing that made the experience manageable was Dr. Gupta. Anjali Gupta had been the ME for as long as Vega could remember, and for someone who dealt with the most unappreciative patients a doctor could ask for, she had one of the best bedside manners around. In Vega's opinion, her talents were being wasted.

“Detective Vega. Good to see you.” She stopped in front of him, erect and proper as always, and gave a small nod of the head. She was dressed in her usual white lab coat over a loose flowery skirt that came nearly down to her ankles. Her hair, graying at the temples, was pulled back haphazardly into a bun behind her head. Her feet were clad in fluorescent pink sneakers. She looked like someone's color-blind grandmother on vacation.

“Good to see you too, Doc. Wish the circumstances were better.”

“They never are, are they?”

Dr. Gupta buzzed them through a doorway. The walls were tiled an industrial green. The floors were painted cement. Everyone was in scrubs.

“I performed the autopsy yesterday,” said Gupta. “I understand your department and the Lake Holly police are conducting a DNA dragnet?” Her voice had the soft singsong of an Indian childhood tinged with the rising inflections of a British education. It made Vega's mangled Bronx vowels sound barbaric by comparison.

“Yes,” he said. “We've got uniforms going door to door in Lake Holly trying to get people to do cheek swabs.” A swab from even one distant blood relative would be enough for the police to map a trail to the baby's mother.

Gupta handed Vega a set of surgical gloves as they stepped inside the forty-five-degree room at the end of the hall. A loud ventilation system kept the smells to a minimum, but it was impossible not to detect an overlay of something greasy and humid in the air.

“How's the dragnet progressing?”

Vega made a face. “It would be progressing a lot better if the Lake Holly PD hadn't screwed up royally four months ago and erased any goodwill they'd built up in the Latino community.”

“What happened?”

“They were supposed to serve a warrant to some gang-banger but mixed up the address and ended up arresting this fry cook instead.”

“The cook is suing?”

“He wishes,” said Vega. “No. It's bigger than that. ICE slapped a detainer on the guy because he had a prior deportation order from a labor raid years ago in California. Now he's facing a one-way trip back to Mexico. His wife's dead, and he's the sole support of his three kids. The community's pretty upset and not in a mood to cooperate with the police.”