“Garrett, the circumstances are extraordinarily bad for starting to like somebody.”
He grunted. “How is that different than every other day of my life?”
“It is true?” Imelda asked.
I looked around the parlor. Alex sat on the steps with his head in his hands. Ty had crashed on the couch with an ice pack on his head. I couldn’t tell if he was conscious or not. I was hoping not. Chase and Markie leaned against the pool table behind him, each with a pool cue in his hands. Benjamin Lindy stood by the kitchen door as if he were guarding the exit. Garrett, Lane and Maia shared the other couch. Nobody looked happy to be here.
“Chris Stowall is dead,” I said. “That’s true.”
Imelda crossed herself and murmured a Spanish prayer.
“Ty was right,” Chase said. “This Calavera guy is gonna kill us all.”
“He hasn’t yet,” I reminded him.
“Dude,” Markie said, “he can’t let anybody raise the alarm. He needs to get off the island.”
“It won’t help us to panic.”
Garrett snorted. “A body in the cellar and one in the freezer, and we shouldn’t panic. Thanks for the advice, little bro.”
Always nice to know your brother is on your side.
“Whoever the killer is,” I said, “I don’t think we’re looking for a stranger. Chris brought Longoria to the island because he knew Calavera would be here this weekend. Calavera is probably in this room.”
Chase and Markie exchanged wary looks. Imelda’s hands clenched on her apron.
“So why hasn’t he killed the rest of us?” Garrett asked. “If this guy’s such a cold-blooded murderer, it would be easy to do.”
“I don’t think he wants to,” I said. “I don’t think he enjoys killing.”
“Yo, little bro. Tell that to Chris Stowall.”
“Calavera was cornered,” I said. “First by Longoria, then Chris Stowall. But I don’t think he relishes the idea of murdering everyone in this room.”
“If he has to,” Lindy said, “he will.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I’m sorry, son. I do. If you have any idea who the killer is, you need to tell us now.”
Alex stood suddenly, as if Benjamin Lindy had just slipped ice down his back. “And what will you do about it, old man? Start killing the suspects?”
“Alex,” I said. “You want to say something?”
He looked around at all of us, like our presence horrified him. Then he took a shaky breath. “Garrett?”
“Yeah, man?”
“Here.” Alex handed him an envelope—beige hotel stationery, like the one that had been slipped under my door. “In case something happens—”
“Nothing’s gonna happen, man. It’s okay.”
“In case it does, keep charge of that, okay? Don’t read it unless…”
“Whoa, man. I told you—”
But Alex raised his hands to block Garrett’s words and stormed out of the room.
I stood in uncomfortable silence, everyone’s eyes on me. I felt like I was back in front of my English class at UTSA. I’d just assigned an unpopular essay on Chaucer’s use of dirty jokes and the class was about to rebel. The only difference was that in most of my classes the students weren’t armed.
“We should stay in here for what’s left of the night,” I suggested. “Safety in numbers.”
“All right,” Lane said.
Garrett looked unhappy. I had a feeling he’d had other plans about where to spend the night, and they did not involve anyone but Lane.
“What about Mr. Huff?” Lindy asked.
I looked at the doorway. I wasn’t sure how to explain Alex’s sudden exit.
“I’ll talk to him.” I turned to Imelda. “¿Y dónde está Jose?”
It was the first time I’d spoken Spanish to her. I could see her doing a quick mental rewind, trying to figure out if she’d said anything embarrassing around me in español.
“Upstairs, señor. The news about Señor Stowall—”
“I’ll find him, too. Garrett, you and Mr. Lindy try to keep everybody else together.”
“I don’t have a gun,” Garrett complained. “He’s got a gun.”
I handed him Maia’s .357. “Now you have a gun.”
It must’ve been a Texan thing. Two pistols in the room made me feel easier than just one. I turned and headed out the way Alex had gone.
At the end of the third-floor hallway, light leaked through an open doorway. I peeked inside and found Jose sitting on a bed. It was raining inside the room. The ceiling drizzled and sagged. It looked more like a washcloth than sheet rock.
The room smelled of marigolds and limes. In one corner was a little altar covered with a turquoise shawl. It held a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe and a few framed photographs, probably Jose and Imelda’s dead relatives. A row of candles sputtered and flickered.
The bedspread was soaked. Everything was soaked. But Jose just sat there, holding his flashlight, watching the candles die one after the other.
“Jose.”
It took him a second to focus on me. “The attic. I think the roof above us is gone.”
“Do you know where Alex is?”
His eye twitched. “No, señor.”
“Your things are getting ruined. You want help covering them?”
Jose’s flashlight beam traced a figure eight on the soggy carpet. “There is not enough tarp in the whole house, señor. God’s will, what He keeps or destroys.”
I approached the altar. Among the photos of the honored dead, one showed Jose and Imelda, ten or fifteen years younger, each of them holding a baby.
“Your children,” I guessed. “Twins?”
He nodded.
“How did they die?”
He looked up, anger flaring in his eyes. We were suddenly man to man. No subservience, no careful deference. “I don’t talk about that.”
Translation: None of your damn business, señor.
A trickle of rain spattered on my back. The drops against the damp carpet sounded like kisses.
“Chris Stowall was in the freezer for hours,” I said. “You didn’t have any reason to go in there when you prepared dinner?”
“No, señor.”
“Who else goes into the kitchen, usually?”
“I didn’t kill him, señor.” There was an odd tone in his voice…almost like regret.
“You said you’d heard of Calavera before. Was it only from the news?”
Jose’s nails bit into the palm of his hand. “That man, Señor Brazos. When he came here—”
“Wait a minute. Peter Brazos came here?”
“In November. He…talked to Señor Huff.”
“Why didn’t you mention this before?”
“It was not my place, señor. The man stayed for only a few hours. He asked questions and left. At the time, I did not think—”
“He talked to you?”
“Un poco. He asked how long we knew Señor Huff. He mentioned names I did not know, showed me photographs of some men and asked if I had seen them.”
“The drug bosses he was prosecuting?”
“No sé, señor. Perhaps.”
On the altar, a raindrop hit a candle and it fizzled out. In the old photograph, the faces of Jose, Imelda and their children flickered. I didn’t like Jose’s story about Peter Brazos. I especially didn’t like that Alex never mentioned the visit. He’d pretended to know nothing about Brazos or the murder of his family.
“Señor, I’m sorry you came here,” Jose said. “You and your wife.”
I tried for a reassuring smile. I’m not sure I pulled it off very well. “By tomorrow, the storm should pass. With any luck, a boat will come. We’ll all be able to leave.”
“Yes.”
“Alex wants to sell the hotel. What will you and Imelda do?”
He stared at me, as if the future tense meant nothing to him. “What can we do, señor? Mr. Huff gave us a home here. This is all we have.”
The contents of a room. A few photos and candles. A turquoise shawl and some Mexican blankets. All ruined by the rain.
“Six months ago, Calavera killed a woman and her two young daughters,” I said. “I don’t think he planned to do that. I think killing them shook him up so much that he started to think about retiring. Possibly even making amends.”
“Anyone who kills children, his soul is lost,” Jose said. “There are no amends.”
“We need to stay together,” I told him. “We’ll all sleep in the parlor.”
“I have to check the basement first. Mr. Huff…” He hesitated. “Mr. Huff said it was flooding.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that there’s a body down there?”
Jose gave me a look I couldn’t quite read. I thought he might be about to tell me something. Then he rose and left the room, leaving me alone with the rain and the scent of extinguished candles.
I had no luck finding Alex. Maybe because I was side-tracked.
Somehow I got turned around on the first floor, running into a dead end where Alex had closed off the collapsed room, then heading back.
Yes, it’s true. Despite being a former sleuth, my sense of direction is sadly lacking. Maia has a great deal of fun reminding me of this whenever we’re lost on the highway.
I found a bedroom door ajar and figured it would do no harm to knock.
No answer. Natural curiosity, I looked inside.
After getting used to wreckage and chaos, I was a little shocked to find a completely neat room. The bedspread was folded down. An old-fashioned brown leather suitcase sat on the chair. One navy blue suit and a dress shirt hung in the closet. On the dresser lay a leather notebook, a ballpoint pen and a box of .45 ammunition.
Benjamin Lindy’s room. Either that, or I had seriously misjudged the college guys.
Under normal circumstances, I would’ve backed out.
Well, okay. Perhaps not. But at least I would have hesitated, pondering whether or not I should invade Mr. Lindy’s privacy. As it was, I went right in and opened the notebook.
He was a lawyer, all right. Everything was documented—neatly organized, dated and labeled, even though it appeared to be a personal scrapbook. The first thing inside was a studio portrait of a woman in her early forties, a little older than me, maybe my brother’s age. She had short blond hair and green eyes. Her sharp nose and the determined angle of her jaw reminded me very much of Benjamin Lindy. She had his wry smile, too, though on a beautiful woman, the effect was quite different than on an old gentleman. Her name was printed at the bottom of the photo: Rachel Brazos. The date: Last Christmas.
The next page: a letter Rachel had written to her father. She asked whether the family ranch had gotten any rain. She invited her father to visit in Corpus Christi. She wrote about the tiles she had chosen for her kitchen remodeling, a play her two little girls had performed in school. She signed the note XOX, Rae. Nothing consequential. The letter was dated about a month before the photo was taken.