Obstruction of Justice (28 page)

"What else is new?" Bob said cheerfully.

"Put Wish on." Wish came on the line, and Nina said, "Wish? Do you mind keeping Bob occupied for a while longer? I’m running late."

"We’ll be here," Wish said. "Gotta get this thing working again. There must be a million pieces."

"That’s neat. You found an old radio to take apart?"

"Right in the front office."

"My radio from college? The one I keep on the shelf by the door? You better put that back together!"

"That’s what we’re doing," Wish said in a tone of injured innocence.

Not too far from Kenny Munger’s apartment building, on Black Bart Road, Nina spied Joe’s truck with its now-familiar logo parked in front of a cottage with a front yard scattered with leaves from a large central maple tree. She waited for Paul to arrive, thinking to herself about the snow that would be on its way in a month or so, wondering how she and Bob would manage with a steep driveway like this in the dead of winter.

Paul pulled in behind her this time and they walked rapidly up wet wooden stairs. The rain had let up and the pine needles on the trees and maple leaves on the ground glistened.

A girl with long hair drawn back in a braid opened the door. "Mr. van Wagoner!" she said with a gasp.

"What the... Mrs. Lauria?"

Paul and the woman stared at each other until Nina said, "May we come in?"

"I guess so," young Mrs. Lauria said, continuing to eye Paul.

After wiping their feet carefully on the mat, they entered the cottage. Inside, the house was dark like Joe’s, but it smelled like onions and refried beans, and a fire burned in the stone fireplace. Two toddlers hid behind the girl, clinging to her jeans. Joe sat in a tattered recliner in front of the fire, his feet up, looking like the man of the house, holding a small boy in his lap.

"Sorry I can’t get up, but I slipped off a roof this morning and hurt my back some. Who are you?" he said to Paul, setting the child on the floor beside him.

"This is the man who bought me lunch, Joe," Mrs. Lauria said. "He wanted to talk about Ruben and Mrs. Meade." She turned back to Paul. "I’m surprised to see you here."

"It’s a shock to see you too. Nina, this young lady is Lucy Lauria. She used to be married to Ruben Lauria, the parolee who saw Anna Meade the day she died."

"I’m Nina Reilly," Nina said to Mrs. Lauria, who said, "Pleased to meet you." She gestured toward the couch and Paul and Nina sat down.

Seeing this pleasant family circle made Nina think of the boy all alone at Joe’s cottage. He was older. Maybe he didn’t like playing with the little kids, and enjoyed a little peace and quiet. Or maybe he really was sick. They were probably worried he would pass his illness along to the other kids.

"What’s this about?" Joe said to Nina. "Why did you bring him along?"

"He’s working for me on Jason’s defense. He’s also working on the Anna Meade case," Nina said. "We’d like to talk to you—about both cases."

"I don’t have anything to hide," Joe said, dangling a red ball in his hand and letting the little boy snatch at it. He looked relaxed. "Is my boy okay? I’m heading home in a few minutes."

"He seemed fine," Nina said.

"Well, then. Let’s get this over with."

"Mrs. Lauria?" Paul said. "How do you come to know Joe?"

Mrs. Lauria looked at Joe. He nodded, and she said, "Joe and I are going to be married soon. Remember, I told you when we had lunch?"

"Congratulations. But how did you meet?"

"I can answer that for you," Joe said. "I see what you’re trying to figure out. Through Ruben. Ruben was my cousin."

Something should have clicked into place, but nothing did. Again, Nina had the dizzy feeling of facts linked to each other, yet seemingly randomly.

"We fell in love after Ruben died, and we’re getting married." Mrs. Lauria went over to the recliner and put her arm around the top of it as if it were an outgrowth of Joe. She seemed to Nina to be the stronger of the two. Joe patted her hand, never taking his eyes off Paul and Nina.

Paul said, "Nina tells me that you had an idea Jason might have been up at Wright’s Lake the night Quentin de Beers was killed."

"It was just a thought. Did you go up there?" Joe said to Nina.

Ignoring him, Paul went on, "What I’m trying to figure out is, why did you think Jason might have gone there?"

"Because you said he was after his grandfather. And that was his grandfather’s hideout, you know? The kid knew where it was. He came back with a six-pound trout from there last summer."

"His mother didn’t mention it to me," Nina put in. "She was very worried about him. Why wouldn’t she mention that Jason might have gone to the cabin?"

"How should I know? Maybe she didn’t want to tell you herself."

Nina considered this. Was it possible? Sarah had in fact told her in an indirect sense, by sending her to Joe, who immediately had thought of the cabin. That way it wouldn’t appear that Sarah knew where the bodies were.

Could Sarah have pretended concern for Jason, sent Nina up to the cabin to find the bodies and left Jason’s sunglasses there to complete the picture? Sarah didn’t want Ray’s body exhumed either, and she must have resented whatever pressure Quentin had brought to bear. But did she know how to use a backhoe, a big, clumsy digging machine? And what kind of person would dig up a dead spouse or, worse, frame her own child!

Unless she had help and a lot of pressure on her from someone else. Leo?

Paul’s eyebrows were raised practically to his hairline, and even Joe and Mrs. Lauria were watching her with puzzled expressions, but all she could think was: Leo, for the company; Sarah, for the final freedom from control by the de Beers men.

Or give them the benefit of not committing a cold-blooded murder. Quentin was digging up his son’s body, the backhoe still warm and dropping bits of dirt from the grave, the hard breath as he shoveled with gloved hands... and Leo and Sarah following. A fight...

She thought coldly, if Sarah left the Vuarnets to frame Jason and picked me to find them, she must be furious that I haven’t turned them over to the police.

"I have a copy of the statement you gave the police," Paul went on when Nina didn’t continue. "You say you were at home when—"

"Yeah, with my boy."

"Any other witnesses?"

Joe started to laugh. He ruffled the little boy’s hair, and said, "Why would I kill the old man?"

"Have you deposited any large sums of money in any bank account in the last couple of months?" Joe thought about this, but Mrs. Lauria understood first.

"Joe is not a killer!" she cried.

"Now, hold on," Joe said. "You think we’d be eating beans and rice every day like we do if I had money stashed away? You think I’d be out there busting my butt mowing lawns for you rich Anglos if I could stay home and live off my bank account? You must be desperate, man. You have anything else to say before little Lucy here kicks you out the door?"

"I’m looking for the owner of a ’59 Pontiac Catalina, white or cream-colored, license number JOK6SSG. Ever owned anything like that?"

Joe’s smile faded. Mrs. Lauria looked pretty unhappy all of a sudden too. Nina, who had been lost in her own thoughts for the past few minutes, started paying attention again.

"I had a car like that, a long time ago. I don’t remember the license plate," Joe answered cautiously.

"How long ago?"

"Years."

"Three years?"

"Maybe."

"Where is it now?"

"It got stolen. I was working at the de Beers house that day. I left my keys in the car, parked in the driveway. When I went there after work, the car was gone."

"Did you report the theft?"

"It was just an old clunker. I mean, that car was almost thirty years old, falling apart. It wasn’t worth reporting. I didn’t have insurance on it either. I would have just bought a lot of headaches reporting it."

"You have to do better than that, Joe," Paul said.

"It’s the truth! It would just get me in trouble somehow. I don’t mix with the government."

"Don’t talk to him like that," Mrs. Lauria commanded. "I thought you were a nice person, a smart one. Now I see you’re just out to screw the Latinos too."

"Hold your horses, Lucy," Joe said, picking up the little boy again. "Why are you asking about that old clunker?" he asked Paul.

"That old clunker killed Anna Meade."

A long silence followed, broken only by the children’s various queries and activities and the sound of the trees dripping onto the roof The fire had burned down and the room had grown chilly. Mrs. Lauria picked up a pine log and threw it onto the coals. Then she picked up her daughter, who had begun to complain.

Joe pushed the recliner up, and sat forward in the chair, wincing, handing her the younger child as soon as she finished getting the fire going again. Mrs. Lauria was so diminutive herself that Nina could hardly believe she could hold both of the chubby little bodies, but she didn’t even seem to notice she had them. She held one on each hip, her face hostile.

"Don’t talk to them anymore, Joe," she said.

"I didn’t do it," Joe said. "It doesn’t make sense. How could my car kill Ruben’s probation officer?"

"If you weren’t driving, someone else was," said Paul.

"Could Ruben have taken the car, Lucy?" asked Joe. "I brought him over to the de Beers place that one time to try to help him get some work. He knew where to find it. I remember asking you at the time—"

"Do you hear what you’re saying? That Ruben ran that woman down! But it’s impossible! He killed himself not two hours before she died!"

"That’s right," Joe said, reassured. "Ruben was in bad trouble, but he would never do anything like that." He stretched in the chair and closed his eyes, wincing again.

Mrs. Lauria said, "Listen, Jose. In case you are having some doubts, I didn’t take the car. I borrowed it a few times, yes, I see in your eyes that you remember that. But I never took it. Why would I harm Anna anyway? Ruben said—remember what he said about her? He said she had a heart. My God, it’s enough to make you cry, all this mistrust and bad feeling in here."

Joe shook his head. "I never thought of you, Lucy. Never."

"Tell me about Ruben’s trouble," Nina said, anticipating the question she could tell was fermenting in Paul’s mind.

"Well, I don’t get what this is about," Joe said. "I can’t see how I am involved at all. Lucy and I haven’t done anything wrong, so I’m glad to tell you what I know.

"Ruben and I were sophomores in high school when he started taking things, just little things. Everybody all around us had so much more, you know. I didn’t let it bother me, but Ruben watched the commercials on television like those people who had all those expensive things were real people like us. He knew what was the right shoes, the right jacket, all that. He got caught lifting a watch at Mervyn’s and was sent to a youth detention camp for six months.

"After that he changed. One night a few months later, he stabbed a guy outside a bar. He was lucky they tried him as a juvenile. He went to a detention center for a year that time.

"Right after he was released, we all moved up to Tahoe. My dad had a job with the forest service. Ruben wanted to get on with them more than anything. He had just gotten married to Lucy on a trip to Mexico and he wanted to better himself, but he had this record by then for this and that. There was no way the U.S. of A. was about to hire him. So he started hanging out with the wrong people again, drinking and partying. He was caught purse snatching and put in jail."

Mrs. Lauria said, "He cleaned up in jail. He wanted to take better care of us, but when he got out, nobody would hire him because of his record and because he had a history of being unreliable, of drinking. He lost heart. Jose was just getting started with the gardening and trying to help him, but Ruben... he never showed up for the jobs. I’ll never forget you stopping by with dinner all the time like you did," she went on, turning to Joe. She was perched on the arm of his chair, and she leaned into him, joining her body to his as if to complete herself.

He smiled back and their smiles met somewhere between them in a hopeful splash, or so it seemed to Nina. She saw how much in love they were, and marveled at the connection between man and woman she was witnessing.

"Ruben was a good man," Mrs. Lauria said. "Don’t think anything else. Unhappy, yes, drinking, yes. That changes you. You do foolish things you would never have done. But he was young, and he was not someone to give up on. He went to Mass once a week with me. He did everything Mrs. Meade told him to do. He praised her. He listened to her advice."

"I think we should tell them, Lucy," Joe said. "In case it would help Mrs. Meade."

"Fine," she said. "If you think it will help."

Paul asked, "Tell us what?"

"Right before he died Ruben told me he had come into some money," Joe said. "He never said where he got it. He had had a few beers and he was talking big. The last time I saw him was the morning he died—"

"The same day Mrs. Meade died," Mrs. Lauria put in.

"He was down, very far down. He said he was in trouble and he was going to see Mrs. Meade and ask her what to do. That’s all he would say. I told him, ’Cousin, whatever it is, I’m your family, you can talk to me, or talk to Lucy, come on,’ but he acted—he acted like he was either too big a man to tell us or he was too ashamed. The two feelings looked the same on him, you know? Then after he died, the next day, Lucy was folding up his jacket and she finds this big wad of cash."

Paul said, "How much?"

"Ten thousand dollars," he said sadly.

That had to be a fortune to Ruben Lauria.

"I kept it," Mrs. Lauria said, "for the funeral expenses. And his father was sick. My second pregnancy went very hard. I couldn’t work. The rest of Ruben’s money kept us going for six months after he died." Keeping her eyes on the burning logs, she said, "I would have given anything just to talk to him for five minutes before he— I could have stopped him.

"That was Ruben’s money," she went on. "He paid for it with his life. I’m not ashamed for taking it, however he got it."