Faithful Unto Death (21 page)

This time I interrupted.

“Oh, my gosh, Mother! You cannot call people and suggest to them how they should spend their money! I can’t believe you called Gaither.”

“How much did she say she would contribute?”

“It doesn’t matter and I am not going to tell you. Jo is not going to accept the money.”

“Bear! Hold on a minute—let me sit down before I pass out right here on this cold, hard tile floor.”

The phone clunked onto the counter and then there was the sound of a chair being dragged across the kitchen floor. She was huffing when she got back on the phone.

“Now, you listen here, Bear, Jo is going to be a prima ballerina, and if you don’t have enough faith in your own child to—”

This was rich.

“Mom? Did you have faith in me?”

“Why, you know I did—”

“What kind of chance did you think I had to play for the NFL?”

“Your coach said you weren’t big enough or fast enough to go pro—”

“The reason I’m asking is, statistically speaking, I had a way, way better chance of playing pro ball than Jo has of being a prima ballerina. See, there are maybe twenty-five prima ballerinas in the world and there are more than three hundred linemen in the NFL. And Mom, if I had made it into the NFL, they would have paid me a truckload of money. Ballerinas make squat. They get paid by the job. I looked it up.”

There was a brief regrouping silence. When my mother started speaking again, she allowed herself the smallest tremor. It’s been an effective tactic for her in the past. Not with me, of course, but as my mother will tell you, I’m a Philistine.

“Bear, I know you won’t be able to understand this, but your youngest daughter is an artist.” I could actually
hear
the dramatic hand-at-her-throat gesture, à la Blanche DuBois.

I sighed. How had I let myself get derailed? I guess the same way I always let myself get derailed with my mom. No matter what I do, she is never happy with me. I tried to get back on topic.

“Jo’s going to New York this summer.”

“She is?! Praise God, Bear, I knew you’d do the right thing!”

No, she did not, either, or she wouldn’t have been scrambling to get other people to pay for it.

“And Jo will not be accepting ‘contributions’ from her grandparents or anyone else. Jo and I have worked out the finances.”

“Well, now, that’s fine, but Gaither and Kenneth have more money than they know what to do with, and it would be a positive blessing to them if you and Annie would—”

“That’s out,” I said. It took enormous self-control not to whack the telephone on my desk three or four times. I’ve done it before, and the phones never work right after that.

There was an offended silence on the other end of the phone.

“Mom?”

“I understand, Bear, and I won’t offer Jo money anymore. Incidentally, Jo tells me you have taken her locket away from her and won’t give it back. Would you mind explaining why you have taken my gift from my grandchild?”

That’s right. I get tattled on by my own child.

“Did Jo tell you she had given the locket to a boy to wear?”

Now there was a considering silence.

“That is a valuable locket and chain, Bear, and I don’t just mean sentimental value.”

“I know it is,” I said.

My mother sighed.

“If I get Jo to promise that she won’t let anyone else have it until she’s a grandmother, will you please give it back to her so she can wear it around her lovely neck the way I intended when I gave it to her?”

I hate being backed into corners.

“Mom, I’ll think about it.”

“One more question, Bear, satisfy my curiosity. How much did Gaither say she would give Jo?”

“Gotta go, Mom.” I disconnected.

It wasn’t a satisfying conversation for either of us. It never is.

Twenty-seven

S
cheduling conflicts meant that Annie Laurie and I would meet at Graham Garcia’s funeral instead of riding together. I wanted to get there early. I wanted to see if the woman who I’d seen at the golf course would come.

No way was I going to call Alex and give him the good news that his father’s mistress was a woman, not a child; I didn’t know for a fact that I was right. All I knew was that I first mistook this woman for Jo, and that she’d been standing right there where Garcia had been killed, and yes, she had been crying. It was suspicious; I was suspicious . . .

What I wanted to know was, could a woman that small have dealt the blow that killed Garcia? If what you see on the forensic television shows is true, then you can darn near tell the color of a person’s eyes by the way a gun was shot or a club was swung. Wanderley had said that even the little girl who found Graham could have killed him, but surely he was joking.

The St. Laurence foyer was cool and dim and empty except for Detective James Wanderley. Of course he would be here; I should have thought of that.

Wanderley wore a dark suit—it looked new, not something he had inherited from his grandfather’s closet. Though he had paired the suit with envy-worthy black cherry boots, which, judging by the styling, were older than he was.

I found the whole boot thing interesting. It’s not all that unusual for a grieving person to wear a piece of jewelry or an article of clothing that belonged to the deceased, but a boot is especially intimate; a well-made boot will mold itself to the owner’s foot. Could be Wanderley was symbolically molding himself after his grandfather. Total psychobabble, of course. I gave a laugh and that eyebrow rose up.

“You’re here early,” Wanderley said and extended his hand.

“You are, too. Guess we both wanted to, uh, greet the guests. Nice suit.” I gave exactly the same pressure with my hand.

Wanderley ignored the suit comment.

“Greet the guests? You aren’t here early to scope out possible suspects, right? Bear, you do know that I’m the detective and you’re the guy who stands up front on Sundays and asks for money, don’t you?”

Yeah, Wanderley was going to need to put a little more effort into those “people skills.”

He went on, “Crime-solving preachers, or rabbis, or housewives—that’s make-believe. You know that, right?”

“Don’t be a patronizing ass, Wanderley.”

“Good. I’m reassured. Sometimes playing football can cause severe head injuries—the effects don’t show up for years. I heard that on NPR. The Sugar Land Police Department does not need you running around thinking you’re Father Brown.”

“Wanderley! You read books?”

It was gratifying to see him flush.

“I read—”

“And Chesterton, at that! For someone of your generation, that’s—”

“My grandfather read Chesterton to me.”

Ah. The grandfather again. Where was the father while this boy was growing up?

There was a soft cough. I turned, and saw Dr. Alejandro Garcia.

He was standing between two distinguished-looking men—presumably William and David, the stepbrothers Graham had been so anxious to equal.

Grief had eaten at Dr. Garcia. He looked thinner and his face was shadowed. His elegant dark suit looked as if it had been tailored for a bigger man. I thought there was a tremor in the hand he held out to me, and I took his hand in both of mine. I wanted to hug him, but it would probably have made him uncomfortable, and anyway, his two sons flanked him like bodyguards.

Dr. Garcia introduced his sons to Detective Wanderley and they swelled, their faces solemn and protective. Wanderley shook Dr. Garcia’s hand. He had the good sense not to offer his hand to the brothers Garcia.

Dr. Garcia said, “Detective Wanderley, Honey tells me you’ve cleared Alex? He is no longer a suspect? I am so grateful. Of course, I knew you could never really have thought the boy could . . . that he could . . .” His eyes brimmed over and he fumbled for a handkerchief.

The older of the two men, William, took his father’s elbow.

“Come on, Pops. Let’s sit down. David, get Dad a glass of water.”

Wanderley said, “Dr. Garcia, after the funeral, if you could give me a few minutes, I wanted to clear up . . .”

William hurried Dr. Garcia off.

David lingered long enough to give Wanderley a warning look. He leaned in to him and said, dropping his voice so Dr. Garcia wouldn’t overhear, “Listen. You want information, you come to me or Will. Dad’s not doing so well. This has been too much for him. He’s an old guy, you know? Graham was his ‘Joseph.’ But we’re not the jealous brothers, so don’t go in that direction. Graham was good to Dad. He was good
for
Dad. You find out who did this. If it wasn’t the crazy old man. Which I doubt.”

David thrust two business cards into Wanderley’s hand.

The man strode off.

I said, “You cleared Alex?”

Wanderley reached into his pocket and pulled out a black plastic guitar pick. He popped it into his mouth.

“Nope,” he said.

“Then why would Honey—”

He shook his head. “Bear, the waters run deep here. The waters run deep.”

A door off the foyer opened. Margaret Butler from the funeral home walked out, and at the same time three or four cars pulled into the parking lot. Wanderley and I shook hands with Butler, signed the book she held out for us, and positioned ourselves near the front doors.

A ten-year-old Continental pulled in behind Honey’s Escalade. An old man got carefully out of the Lincoln and walked around to open the passenger door of the Continental.

Wanderley leaned over to tell me. “That’s Honey’s Uncle Ralph. Doing HD’s job for him. Since HD is still wearing an orange jumpsuit.”

Ralph reached a hand into the car and drew out a tall, frail woman. Beanie. Or Belinda, rather. Honey’s mother looked like a Belinda—I don’t know how HD could ever have called such a gracious woman “Beanie.” She took a minute gathering her purse and sweater and a Bible, took the old man’s arm, and began walking slowly with him over to the church.

The doors to the Escalade were still shut. Honey was probably still sitting in the car, taking the time to touch up her makeup, I thought.

Finally, the Escalade’s side door opened and Jenasy got out and joined the old couple. They both embraced her. The man took Jenasy’s face in his hands, bent her head down, and kissed the top of her head as though he were bestowing a benediction on his best loved. Cruz opened the driver’s door and clambered out. She smoothed down a navy suit and settled a navy pillbox firmly on her head. She leaned back into the car and said something.

Another minute passed before Honey Garcia opened the front seat passenger door and stepped down from the SUV. Black chiffon drapery and an overelaborate hair arrangement made her look like a Hollywood widow from a dated movie. Ralph took Belinda’s arm, and escorted her, along with Honey, toward the door. Jenasy walked with her arm hooked into Cruz’s. The group was stopped by a couple who had arrived at the same time and had been patiently waiting by the door.

“Wanderley,” I said, snatching my chance, “how tall was the person who struck Garcia? Do you know? Could they have been as short as, say, Jo?”

He swung back to me. “Bear! That’s what I was talking about! You’re Father Browning it!”

“No, no, I only—”

Wanderley turned to the door and studied the group outside.

“I don’t know how tall the murderer was. That’s mainly TV stuff, knowing the murderer’s height, weight, and the color of the eyes, all from the angle of the blow,” he said without looking. “I haven’t had any word that would tell me someone Jo’s height could not have delivered the blow that killed Garcia, but forgive me, Bear, you’re a sick puppy to even think that. Your own daughter—”

“Wait,” I said. “No, I mean, I never thought Jo—”

“So why did you ask me? If you didn’t think it was Jo? Do you have something to tell me?” He studied me.

“I . . . no! I was wondering, that’s all. You see things on TV . . .”

But he had dismissed me. Honey and her group were coming through the doors, and more people were pulling up and getting out of their cars. Wanderley pulled back to a corner of the room where he could watch unobtrusively. I started the handshaking, back-patting thing.

Belinda and Ralph were looking grieved and a little puzzled at Honey’s manner—she was over-enunciating everything she said and walking with a care that her three-inch heels couldn’t account for. Honey had evidently fortified herself for the occasion with some more of her doctored lemonade.

If Honey didn’t already have a full-scale drinking problem, she soon would if she kept up like this. I would have to find someone to have a talk with her.

The room was filling up. Lots of people from our church were there, lots of other people who I assumed were from the Catholic church, and a group of about twenty men and women with good haircuts and even better dark suits, who I thought must be from Graham’s law firm; something about the way they kept surreptitiously checking their phones and texting.

I wondered which of the dark-suited crew was the lying dog. I wondered if all of them were. Then I made a mental mea culpa for that kind of prejudice.

I was greeting Honey’s Uncle Ralph, saying all the expected things. I didn’t see Annie Laurie come in, but suddenly she was by my side, breathless and tugging at my arm.

“Bear . . .”

Ralph was talking, I had no idea what he was saying, but of course, I was pretending to listen, giving every appearance that he had my full attention, and patting Annie Laurie’s hand to let her know I’d be with her in a moment.

“Bear . . .” she said again. But then I saw them.

Alex Garcia stood in the door of the building. He had on dark Ray-Ban sunglasses. I don’t know if they were real Ray-Bans; they could have been Walgreen’s five-dollar knockoff. They looked like Ray-Bans. He wore a black jacket and charcoal slacks and his thick blond hair was tied into a nub of a ponytail at the nape of his neck. I took all that in, which surprises me, because all I really remember seeing was the woman on his arm. Not a woman, a girl. She only looked like a woman. My Jo.

Jo was wearing one of Annie Laurie’s dresses, a black jersey wrap that Jo had pulled tight enough to fit her slimmer frame. When Annie Laurie wore the dress, it hit right at the knee; it fell to midcalf on Jo. She wore black pumps on her feet and small pearl earrings dangling from her earlobes—the earrings were another present from my mom—and had wrapped her long dark hair into some kind of loose updo. I don’t have any idea what you’d call such a hairstyle, but the sum total effect was that Jo looked like a twenty-eight-year-old woman, not a fourteen-year-old girl.

Am I making it sound like Jo was tarted up? She wasn’t. She had on almost no makeup, and except for those pearl earrings, no jewelry. I hadn’t given her back her locket.

She didn’t look like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes, either. She looked like a mature woman of twenty-something and she looked . . . heart-crashingly beautiful.

I felt a terrible fear. I can’t tell you why. Why am I so frightened for this child of mine? Why does Jo tear at my heart in a way my lovely Merrie never has? I cannot catch hold of her. I am so afraid of losing her.

Annie Laurie picked up the conversation I had let fall, and linked her arm through mine—short of physically shaking her off, I couldn’t free myself to go confront Jo. Exactly Annie’s intent, of course.

And what was I going to say anyway? I had laid down the law that Jo couldn’t see Alex; Jo had been clear that she wouldn’t stop. I had no idea what to do. I had never openly defied my father when I was a kid. Naturally, I had disobeyed him on a number of occasions, but I had taken precautions to keep that from him. See, I think that’s a sign of respect, not being open about it.

Had I known what to do, there wouldn’t have been time anyway. Before I could catch Jo’s eye, I saw the Asian woman from the golf course.

She passed right by me, a light, bright citrus scent trailing her. Up close I could see that she was closer to forty-five than thirty-five. The black sheet of hair I had seen hanging to her waist the night she was at the golf course was now knotted in a sleek chignon at the back of her slim neck. She was wearing a fitted black-skirted suit—the only soft touch was a pink and gray silk scarf tucked into the neckline. Three-inch-high heels put her at all of five-two, five-three. Barefoot, she would stand an inch shorter than Jo.

The woman wasn’t beautiful. Handsome, yes. And definitely attractive. But she was no stunner. I glanced over at Honey. This woman was Honey’s physical opposite. In my experience, men who have affairs often choose younger, prettier versions of their wives. You know, the John Derek marriage model.

Honey was tall, full-bosomed, and round-hipped even at her reduced weight. She was naturally soft and pillowy. The woman who was making her unobtrusive way through the crowd had the body of an athlete, lean and toned and tiny. Honey’s touched-up red hair and blue eyes could not have contrasted more with this woman’s dark eyes and inky hair, slightly silvered at the temples. Honey’s face was flushed with emotion and cosmetics. And drink. This woman was pale under her darker skin, and her makeup was muted.

If Graham Garcia had gone in search of a woman who was as dissimilar from his wife as nature allowed, he couldn’t have done better than the woman who slipped into the aisle seat of the last row.

“You all right?” my wife asked.

I brought myself back.

“I’m fine. Where’s Jo?” People were moving toward the auditorium and we followed.

“She’s with Alex. She’s sitting with the family.”

“For crying out loud, Annie Laurie, what is she, his fiancée? Do you think that’s appropriate, Jo sitting with the family? I can’t think that’s going to go down well with Honey. I don’t like this one iota.”

Annie Laurie stopped short of the sanctuary door, veered to the right down an adjacent corridor, and kept walking. I waited a second but she didn’t come back. I had to trot after her and take her arm before she stopped.