Murder Mile High (22 page)

Head bent over his glass, he lapsed into silence. After a moment I cleared my throat.

“So she’s dead?” His head came back up, his hand tightened on the glass. “She deserved it, that bitch.” His voice was rough, but tears glistened on his face. “What happened?”

“Her car ran off the road.”

“Accident?” He gazed into space, not looking at me or anything. “She drove that Beamer like the devil was after her.”

“In this case, he was.” I stood directly in front of him, trying to look into his eyes. “She was shot first.”

His immediate response was fear. “She—you—did you—”

“It wasn't me.” He scrambled away from me so fast his chair almost tipped over. “I’m still trying to find out who could be doing these things, especially since that person wants me to take the blame.”

“I don’t have anything,” Leonard said in a high gabble. “It’s all gone. You can see for yourself. Don’t bother me anymore. Don’t hurt me.”

“I’m not going to.” Sweat glistened on his face, and his eyes darted around the room. I began to worry that he’d find a weapon and kill me in needless self-defense. “Look, calm down.” I sat in the other chair, moving it farther from him. “I just want to know if you knew about Tony bringing in illegal aliens.”

That got his attention. “How did you find that out? Did she tell you?”

“No. I just heard some stuff.” I leaned forward. “Evidently you knew. And Maud knew?”

Leonard didn’t speak for a while. He sipped his whiskey, his fingers tight around the glass, as if he was afraid I would try to take it away.

“He called me,” he said suddenly. “Just after I got the ax—after he got me fired! Had the gall to say he was sorry, and offer me a new job—temporary, he said. Help out some people he knew. He didn’t say what it was, and I was too depressed to care. Once I got down there—”

“Down where?”

“In New Mexico, somewhere.” He gestured south. “I’ve forgotten where.”

I doubted that, but let it pass. “So you were a coyote, too."

He looked stung. “No. When I knew—when I understood—I said I wouldn’t, and I left—rented myself a car and drove back. He—Tony said they’d be around to get their deposit back. I didn’t know what that meant, but then a few days later my truck was stolen, and someone called to say I’d better not report it.” He licked his lips. “I was scared,” he admitted. “But nothing else happened, so I forgot about it. Tried to, anyway."

He fell silent again, and I thought he might have reached the end of his communicative mood. I wished I’d had Amy’s tape recorder this time. I prompted, “Was that the end of your association with him?”

He darted a glance at me. “Damned if I know why I’m telling you this,” he mumbled. “But what does it matter, anyway? What does anything matter?” He tossed off the rest of his whiskey and poured another generous shot into the glass. “Want some?” Unsteadily, he offered the bottle to me.

“No, thanks.” I took it from him and set it on the floor beside my chair. “It matters to me, Mr. Tobin. I didn’t know about this stuff or have anything to do with Tony’s death, but the police have put me at the top of their suspect list. I just want to find out the truth.”

“So you say.” He swirled the liquid moodily in his glass. “Can’t trust you. Can’t trust anybody.”

“Tony was untrustworthy.” I kept my voice steady, not insistent. “Did he call again recently, try to blackmail you again?”

“How did you know?” Leonard took another sip, and answered himself in a mincing falsetto. “‘You have just told me, Mr. Tobin.’” He giggled a little. “I watch Sherlock Holmes, you know.”

“What did Tony say?”

Sighing, Leonard set down the glass and appeared momentarily more sober. “He said he would tell the authorities I was involved in a smuggling ring if I didn’t give him money. And you know what I told that bastard?” He leaned toward me, smiling, “I told him, go ahead. Do your worst, Tony old boy. Nothing left. Nothing left for you to get your fangs into. I told him, ‘Damn you to hell, Tony Naylor. Even if I have to send you there myself.’”

He raised his glass triumphantly and drained it. His eyes were glazed, and I wasn’t surprised to see him slump over in his chair. His pulse was strong when I felt it. I wiped my fingerprints off the liquor bottle, just in case, and set it beside him on the floor. Then I left.

Driving back to Mom and Dad’s, I found myself deeply sorry for Leonard Tobin, though he was a repulsive little guy in many ways. Tony had really ruined his life. In fact, I felt lucky myself—I had had nothing Tony wanted in the end. I hadn’t even had fear, and that was what he’d really wanted from me.

At my folks’ house, I knocked briefly and let myself in. Dad was sitting in his chair, pulled up close to the TV, which he watched intently. Some kind of sport was on the screen, with an announcer braying excitedly. He barely responded to my hello.

I looked in the kitchen, which gleamed spotlessly. The oven door was open, half-swallowing a slender form. For a moment I worried that Mom had felt impelled to rise from her sickbed and scrub; then the woman emerged from the oven, and I saw she was Conchita, Molly’s live-in help.

She gave me a scared look. With a murmur in Spanish, she turned back to her work, sweeping the blackened bits out of the oven and giving it a final polish. Industriously, she tidied the area around the stove, then rose and tried to slip past me.

I put out one hand to stop her
. "Dónde está mi madre?
” That was about the extent of my Spanish, learned on the side during high school and rusty with disuse.

She murmured something I didn’t understand, and I shrugged and said, “
No entiendo
.”

That made her giggle. “You speak well,” she said softly, ducking her head.

“So do you. Is Molly teaching you?”

A guarded look came over her face. “
La señora es muy amable
. She me speaks.”

I let that pass. “Sit down here, Conchita.” I pointed to the chairs at the table, and after a moment she sat on the edge of one, pulling it out from the table so it didn’t look like she was getting too comfortable.

I let the silence stretch out for a moment, then asked abruptly, “Do you remember the man who brought you here?”

Immediately all the shutters came down over her face. Now she murmured, “
No entiendo
.”

“Was he dark, with springy hair?” I gestured with my hands, trying to sketch the way Tony’s hair grew, and a sudden recollection pierced me. The man who drove a white van on Highway 70, as I approached Denver. I had thought myself paranoid because he looked like Tony. Now I wondered if that had been Tony, if he’d even then been plying his trade. “How long ago did you come here?”

Still she said nothing, her eyes cast down, hands clenched together in her lap.

“Look, Conchita,” I said, leaning forward. “I’m not from Immigration.
No soy La Migra
.”

“No?” She looked at me assessingly, and then said in painstaking English, “Why you ask so?”

“That man—” I re-sketched the springy hair, and this time she nodded, “was once my husband. He was—very cruel.” I searched my memory for the right Spanish to describe this, and couldn’t. “Now he’s dead.”

She nodded vigorously.
“Si. El espíritu
—still it lingers. Not resting.” She glanced through the archway toward the front door.

“He wasn’t killed here.” I tried to reassure her. “Just dumped off after someone killed him.”

“No fué aqui?” She looked relieved and broke into voluble speech, none of which I understood. When I shrugged, pantomiming bewilderment, she smiled, and I remembered again that she was the same age as those thronging students who appeared to put no value on school at all. I wondered if they’d rather scrub ovens than go to government class.

Speaking more slowly, she began again. "Señor Jefe—he tell us to call him so. He come to drive at end. We are so tired.” She laid her cheek on her hands, closing her eyes to indicate how tired they were. “But he drive fast and slow, laughing loud,
muy loco
. Once he take Maria out, and she come back crying.” Conchita looked fierce at this. “When we get here, we hate him much, but what we do?
La Migra
take us away if we complain.” She twisted her hands together. “
Mi familia
—I send money.”

“How long ago?” She wrinkled her forehead over this. “How many days—cuántos días—since you arrived?”

“Días?” She thought. “
Ocho
?
Nueve
?” She shrugged.

So if it were Tony I’d seen on the highway, he had been making another trip. I didn’t know what the frequency of his haulings was, or whether he was his own boss or worked for someone else. And when I tried to ask Conchita, I got quickly out of my depth. She heard my dad stirring in the living room and jumped to her feet.

“I work now. Bye-bye.”

Dad came in and went to the refrigerator. “Guess nobody in this house is going to eat lunch anymore,” he grumbled, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

“I’ll fix you something, Dad. What do you want?”

“Anything,” he said expansively. “But none of that sloppy cheese.”

I heated soup out of a can, and made a thick and meaty sandwich, with plenty of Miracle Whip—no effete mayo for him. I found some sandwich cookies and cut carrot sticks for him to complain about, but eat anyway. It was pretty much what he’d taken in his lunch box for thirty years, and he wasn’t a man who liked changes.

I added some fruit to his little stack of carrot sticks. He came to the table, sat down, grunted at the grapes, and tucked in. I went looking for my mother, passing Conchita, who was polishing the window sills in the living room. At least, the house would be clean after she’d spent a couple of days there.

Mom was in her room, sitting up in bed with a book open on her lap, her head down on her chest while she dozed. She woke up when I touched her shoulder.

“Mercy. Sleeping all day—don’t know what I’m coming to.”

“There’s some lunch in the kitchen, Mom. Or should I bring yours in here?”

“Oh, no. I can get up. I should be doing something, not letting that girl of Molly’s take care of everything.” I gave her my arm, and we shuffled down the hall. “She scrubbed the kitchen floor on her hands and knees today,” Mom said as we passed through the living room, her tone reverent. “
Buenos días
, Conchita.”

The girl looked around with a smile
. “Buenas tardes, señora
."

“She means I’m tardy, I suppose.” Mom shook her head. “Can’t seem to get around anymore, and that’s a fact.”

“Takes awhile to get over these illnesses.” I made her comfortable in the kitchen, where my dad acknowledged her presence with a pat on her hand between slurps of his soup. I got her a bowl, too, and half a sandwich, and some grapes, and sat down with them at the table. Every time I did this, it felt strange. An awkward silence fell over the room, broken only by Dad’s insistent slurping.

“Really, Fergus,” Mom began.

“Just cooling my soup,” Dad said. This exchange, well-worn by much use, brought me close to tears for some reason.

“So, Molly brought my gun back this morning. Said young Biff 'borrowed' it,” Dad said into the silence.

Mom gasped, her hand going to her heart. “Biff—took your gun?”

“I couldn’t find it the other day—told Lizzie about it. Anyway, seems young Biff wanted to look like a big shot or something, so he snuck off with it.” Dad fell silent, coping with a big bite of sandwich.

“Whatever would he want to do that for?” Mom looked worried. “Poor boy. It must have been a shock for Molly.”

Dad laughed. “Biff needs a good thrashing,” he said, pushing his plate away. “Boy’s spoiled rotten. Gets anything he wants out of Molly—she’s got no notion how to manage a young fellow like that.”

Mom stared at him. “And I suppose you know so much about it? I seem to recall you having awful fights with your sons.”

Dad actually winked at me. “I learned something from that, woman. Shoulda made them boys go to work sooner. You notice a paycheck settled them right down.”

“If you can call it settled.” She sniffed. “Seems to me they were out drinking and fighting five nights out of six.”

Dad shrugged. “So? That’s not what hurts a boy. What hurts a boy is idleness.”

I could tell they were settled in for a nice long bicker. The afternoon was wearing on; I was supposed to take Amy over to the police station, and I hoped I could do that without Renee ever finding out, or my life wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel.

“Well, is there anything I can get you—any errands to run?”

That gave Mom’s thoughts a different direction. After a little thought, she produced a couple of items she wanted at the drugstore—a new hot water bottle and some eyewash. Dad disdained my offer, but she recalled that he was out of denture cream. I promised to bring them the items before bedtime, and left them comfortably arguing while Conchita attacked the dusty shelves of the linen closet.

Chapter 26

I did my errands at the drugstore, and was waiting for Amy when she got out of school. She didn’t talk much on the way to the police station. I hated having to take her there, hated having her involved in this. Not nearly as much as Renee would, though. I asked Amy what she’d tell her mom about this excursion.

“I won’t.” She shot me a look, half-defiant, half-pleading. “It’s for her own good. She’d just get all bent and start raving. The less she knows, the happier she’ll be.”

It had the ring of a philosophy. I wondered if Renee had applied it to Amy—I think most parents do. And probably most kids turn around and use it against their parents.

We sat in the holding area of the station for a while, waiting for Eva to see us. Then we sat in front of a desk while she churned out forms and statements about our various activities. I didn’t like having to sign statements about Biff, but he looked like the kind of guy who can take care of himself. It made me twitchy to sit there with cops all around. I thought I’d gotten used to being around the police—after all, one of them lives right in front of me. But it was different when they were sizing you up for a possible jail cell.