Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (15 page)

“Why?”

Jesus, I thought, sometimes the wrong people get to be parents. But I knew that was just my own worry and guilt over my conflict.

“Because I don’t want the cops talking to Amber tonight—going to your house and saying, ‘We’re holding your father in a murder and we want to question you about a missing pearl.’”

He turned pale, and I was sorry for my nasty thought of a moment before. “Omigod.”

“Things will be better for her tomorrow. I promise.”

“Why? What makes you think so?”

“Trust me on this, Ricky. I can make it better. But one thing—do me a favor and don’t tell anyone I advised you to withhold information, okay? It’s not really cricket.”

He nodded, looking as if he hadn’t the least idea which end was up. I didn’t blame him. If he was innocent, it had certainly been a perplexing hour or so, and it was about to get worse.

It did get worse, but not as bad as it could have gotten. Ricky fell apart and cried and howled about the lost woman he loved and generally came off as such a baby no one in his right mind could have suspected him of murder.

But of course, that’s not how cops and sheriffs think. They didn’t arrest him only because they didn’t have anything on him. They placed the time of death as earlier that day, about the time Ricky was with Julio and me, and he had other alibis for just before and after that would have to be checked. They didn’t have a witness, and they didn’t have fingerprints or other physical evidence. And, not knowing about the pearl, they didn’t have a suggestion of a motive beyond the usual lover’s quarrel. Actually, that had a lot of merit for them—if they found out there were other men in her life, and they almost certainly would if Ricky’s suspicions were correct, that wouldn’t look good for our team.

But the point is that they had no reason to arrest him that night. We were out of there by ten, and I had miles to go before I slept. I had to get to my other client—the one who was still on the loose—and talk some sense into her.

I heard the gentle buzz of the television as Julio opened the door, and then there he was, in black sweats. Black sweats with nothing underneath them. I felt small beads of moisture form on my forehead, and hoped he couldn’t see them.

I said: “I thought Esperanza didn’t watch TV.”

“Rebecca.”

“I’m sorry to drop by so late.”

“Come in. You left so suddenly.”

Esperanza was lying on the floor in the living room, covered with a blanket, eyes at half-mast, but fixed doggedly on the TV.

“She’s allowed two hours on Saturday night,” Julio said, “and she gets to watch cartoons on weekends.”

I sat down on the floor and kissed her cheek. “Hi, client. We have to talk.”

“Hi. Why’d you leave so quickly?”

“Come in the bedroom and I’ll tell you.”

Julio said, “Wait a minute—how about me?”

“Sorry,” I said. “This is privileged.”

Once we were in Esperanza’s room, I spoke with no preamble. “Honey, we have to tell your dad. Tonight. To stop something bad from happening.”

“How bad?”

I knew where that could lead—“pretty bad”; “Really, really bad?”—so I headed it off: “Now, don’t faint, okay? Can you handle this? Amber might be in trouble.”

“I’m not going to faint.” She sounded slightly annoyed, as if I’d been talking down to her—as if she wasn’t the sort to faint at the mere mention of Amber, and didn’t see why I didn’t understand that. Her dip in the bay had changed her, I thought.

“Somebody else got killed, honey.”

Her lip quivered as she tried to get up the courage to speak.

“I don’t think it’s anybody you know. A woman named Katy Montebello.”

“Ricky’s—” Her eyes were huge with surprise, but she stopped herself in midblurt.

“Ricky’s what?”

She spoke with dignity: “Amber calls her Ricky’s Sugar Mama. Ricky didn’t kill her, did he?”

“Of course not. He’s my client, too—none of my clients are guilty.” I waited for the expected smile. “But she was murdered. And the pearl could have had something to do with it. The police questioned Ricky about it tonight, and I did something I’m not supposed to do—I told him not to tell them he had the pearl. Do you know why I did that?”

She nodded gravely. “Because he would have had to say Amber stole it. Because that’s what he thinks. Oh, Rebecca, she’s so brave! She must know I took it—I told Libby, and Libby can’t keep a secret. She must have told Amber. Anyway, anybody could figure it out. And Amber never told Ricky. I feel so awful.”

“Sweetheart, we all get scared sometimes. You did what you had to.” Poor kid. With Sister Teresa’s hell-and-jail hanging over her, who could blame her?

She took my hand. “Let’s go tell Daddy.”

Frankly, I was astonished. This was a different child from the quivering lump of protoplasm Julio had had on his hands before the sail.

“Daddy, I have something to tell you.”

“I think it’s about time, don’t you?”

“Promise you won’t get mad.”

“I promise I won’t feed you to Cecil—is that good enough?”

“Oh, Daddy, I’ve been so bad!”

She ran to him, leaped into his lap, and cried for about twenty minutes before she could talk. So much for the new, adult Esperanza. I guess growing up is a matter of fits and starts.

Julio listened to his daughter’s guilty plea with all the gravity of a three-judge panel, made appropriate fatherly noises (but forbore to feed the kid to the wolf eel), and, frankly, didn’t seem all that upset that his little darling was a thief. I guess after nearly losing her, it seemed rather a small matter.

He did have some good questions, though—some I should have asked myself. “Who knew you gave Sadie the pearl,
Nena
?"

“Libby.”

“Who else?”

“Nobody, I guess.”

“Was there anyone near her office while you were talking with her?”

She shook her head. “The door was closed.”

“Let me ask you something else. Did you tell Sadie where you really got the pearl?”

Her eyes widened at the idea of letting her idol know she’d stolen something. “No!”

“You told her you found it on the beach?”

She nodded vigorously.

“What did she say when you told her that?”

“Say?” She squinched up her face, puzzled.

“Do you think she believed you? Did she say anything to make you think she suspected something?”

Puzzlement yielded to wonder. She snapped her fingers. And then she burst into tears again.

“
Nena
, what is it?”

“Oh, Daddy, I’m so embarrassed. She knew. She knew! Oh, Daddy, oh, Daddy, Sadie died thinking I was a thief!” Julio held her and rocked her back and forth. “Honey, she loved you—don’t you ever forget that—just like I do. She didn’t care what you did. She loved you anyway; do you believe that?”

Esperanza saw the wisdom of that and, in a few minutes, calmed down.

Julio said, “How did you know Sadie knew how you got it?”

“Because she said, ‘Are you sure you found it on the beach? Are you really, really sure?’ But I just kept saying, ‘I did.’
Maybe
she believed me. She might have, don’t you think, Daddy?”

When everything had been hashed over and then rehashed, it was agreed it was too late to call Ricky, and that Esperanza would do it first thing in the morning. She tried to get Julio to do it, but he held firm. She didn’t have to go to jail, but she did have to say she was sorry.

She kissed us both good night and scampered off to sleep, once again, the sleep of the innocent. I got up to leave, but Julio stopped me. “Have a glass of wine with me.”

Wine? After a nightmare on the bay, a close-up of a corpse, several hours in a police station, and a ten-year-old’s trauma? A glass of wine with Julio? Surely life could hold no sweeter pleasure. “It’s late,” I said. “I’d better go.”

“Please. I need to talk to you.”

“Oh. Well, of course then.” Dear, kind Rebecca—always there when you need her. “Could I make a phone call first?’’ It was late to call a judge, but worth a try. A boy answered, a teenager. Music blared in the background. Girls shrieked. Conversation hummed.

“Judge Reyes, please.”

“Who?”

“Judge Reyes.”

“Just a minute.” And then shouting, “Hey, Charlie, is your dad a judge?”

Another boy came to the phone. “Can I take a message? My mom’s gone for the weekend.”

So much for Judge Serita Reyes. Maybe Bruce Parton knew someone else.

* * *

Julio’s house was so small the kitchen opened off the living room and shared a common counter with it, making it possible to watch him open the wine. Meaning I got to stare without seeming to, contemplating the shoulders of my host. Wondering if it was wise to drink with him.

The wine he chose was a chewy red one, just what I was in the mood for. If he'd have brought in something wimpy and white, I’d have probably drunk the whole bottle, trying to find some substance. White’s okay for small talk around the pool; you need red for bloodshed.

When we were settled decorously at opposite ends of the couch, Julio said, “Rebecca, Sadie may have been killed for that thing.”

Didn’t I know it.

“You know what? I might be the last person to have seen her alive. She called me up on the roof Friday night to talk about Esperanza. That’s how I knew she didn’t believe the found-it-on-the-beach story.”

“Wait a minute. You mean you knew about the pearl all along?”

“No, of course not. When Esperanza swears someone to secrecy, she swears half a dozen people, I guess.”

“Weaving her tangled web.”

He nodded. “Actually, I shouldn’t say she called me up to the roof. That sounds imperious, and Sadie wasn’t like that at all. I popped into her office for something and she asked me if I’d like to go up with her. She was in invertebrates, you know, and there’s a research lab up there, where they were doing experiments with urchin eggs. She wanted to take a look, she said, and thought I might like to join her for a little break.”

“Odd.” Unless it was a come-on. What else could it be?

But Julio shook his head. “Not odd at all. Sadie had allies and she had enemies. Mostly allies, to tell you the truth, but—I hate to say it, but there was Marty, for one. You’ve seen what that third floor is like; even though she was the only one who could close the door, she never was comfortable discussing private things in her office. She’d start whispering, and you wouldn’t be able to communicate. So she got in the habit of going up to the roof, especially around six or six-thirty—did most of her hiring and firing up there. She loved it up there after work—said she could think better. I have to admit she knew what she was doing—it was the perfect place for a private discussion.”

“Romantic.” I was jealous.

“Very. Anyway, she got me up there and she said something very strange had happened. She said Esperanza had been by, and she was worried about her and said she thought Esperanza needed help. Needed to go to a therapist, I mean.”

“Isn’t that a little pushy for an employer? I mean, it’s your private business.”

He looked confused. “No. I mean, Sadie and I talked about Esperanza all the time; she helped me a lot.”

I remembered how he’d enlisted my aid as well.

“And of course, something
was
bothering Esperanza. The divorce. She was still drawing pictures of herself and Sylvia and me—she is still. Did you know children of divorced parents do that for a long time?”

I shook my head.

“She’d told Sadie,” he continued, “that she felt guilty about it—that she was afraid she was the one who caused it. And Sadie said that night that she wasn’t getting better, she was reaching some kind of crisis. Because she’d done something to draw attention to herself, she said. She said it was a cry for help.

“I asked what, of course. But she said she couldn’t tell me, that would be violating Esperanza’s confidence. But that she’d done something out of character, and she wanted adults to know about it, and that I ought to listen to her. But I said I couldn’t listen to her when she hadn’t told me anything. …” He paused. “Well, anyway, we got into an argument. It was so damned frustrating, her not telling me what was going on. Now I see what it was. It was about the pearl. She knew Esperanza hadn’t found it on any beach.”

“Did anyone see you go up with her?”

“Sure. Lots of people were working late.”

“It’s odd no one mentioned it to the police—I mean, that they haven’t talked to you about it.”

“Oh, they have. Don’t worry, they have.”

And they still thought Marty a better suspect.

“So how did you and Sadie leave it? Were you still angry with each other?”

“No. Thank God. Wouldn’t that be a terrible thing to live with—that your friend died angry with you? Finally she convinced me. I saw it wouldn’t be fair to Esperanza to tell what she knew. In the end we kissed and made up.”

Damn. I was jealous again. “Did you leave together?”

He spread his hands. “I left her there. She still hadn’t looked at the urchin eggs.”

We were silent. “I saw Marty on the way out,” he said finally. “She was leaving, too.”

For her date, I supposed, but I wondered why Julio mentioned her. He poured more wine, which I drank gratefully.

He said, “Then I came home and tried to talk to Esperanza about her problems, but that was pretty hard, considering I was more or less in the dark as to why I was doing it.”

I said, “She’s a lovely child.”

And Julio said, “Could we talk about something besides Esperanza for a while? Sometimes I forget I have any identity besides ‘Daddy.’”

“It must be hard being a single father.”

He shook his head. “I mean it. Something else, Rebecca. Like why a smart, successful woman drives a crummy old Volvo.”

I was insulted. “You don’t like my car?”

“It’s just not you. You need a—”

I wasn’t about to let him finish. Who cared what he thought I needed? “You know what I hate about this state, and this decade, and this point in history? Materialism turned into a virtue. The only thing in hell wrong with my car is it’s not fashionable. What kind of culture is this where expensive things like cars are throwaway items, subject to the whims and caprices of fashion?”