The Good, the Bad and the Guacamole Page 13

  I looked up, realizing her voice was strong, nearly normal.

  She dropped her duffel on the end of the bed. “I wasn’t in love with the guy, but he was a human being. And he was killed in my home.” She pounded on her chest. “My living room. And I brought him there.”

  I placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. “That’s not your fault. You had nothing to do with it.”

  She stepped closer, her gaze intensifying. “Of course not, but it’s too insane being this close to two murders.” Her voice faded, her eyes gazing out the window at the Chisos Mountains in the distance.

  “And me? Do I make it worse?” Was I a reminder of all the violence too?

  “Huh. I don’t know which one of you snores the loudest, you or the Lenster.”

  After a moment of thought I said, “Why don’t I play the investigation close to my chest?”

  She nodded. “How about you only answer the questions I ask?”

  “Isn’t that the advice they give parents on how to talk to their children about sex?”

  She laughed and hurled a pillow at my head. “Shut up.”

  I smiled in relief. “I’d tell you where I’m going, but you didn’t ask.”

  “As if I care.” She smirked and grabbed the duffel from the floor.

  “So, you’re really abandoning me for Casa Martinez?”

  “You bet your butt I am,” she said, walking toward the front door. “Two homemade meals a day and my own room? My momma didn’t raise no fool.”

  “Yip, yip,” Lenny barked.

  She laughed and managed to scoop him into her arms without dropping either the duffel or her striped bag. “I’ll see you soon, shrimp.” With a rub behind his ears, she handed him to me.

  I followed her into the kitchen and watched as she tossed my spare key onto the Formica table. “Keep it real,” I said.

  She turned in the open doorway. “Uh-huh. You just keep it safe.”

  “And you, Goth Girl.”

  Patti closed the door and clambered down the stairs.

  Chapter 11

  I don’t run fast, and I don’t run often, but running in my stylish purple shoes with orange accents and my sock puppet knee-highs gives me that same uplifted feeling I receive when I listen to the preacher’s sermon on Sunday mornings. Makes me believe in the impossible—like jogging down Main Street will make me lose weight and fit into my clothes.

  “Lenny, I hope you’ve got your groove on because you’re running too, my friend.”

  “Yip,” he said, bouncing up and down with excitement.

  I snapped him into his body harness, grabbed my UT water bottle, and bounded down the stairs. It was always a good idea to bring Lenny along; that way folks were less likely to suspect that I was as slow as a box turtle wearing a brick around his neck. Hopefully, they would take one look at Lenny and think, She can’t run any faster, not with a dog the size of a loaf of bread. Bless his heart—just look how fast his little legs are going.

  And I never challenged Lenny to a race because there were days when I suspected he could outrun me.

  We made it as far as the doggie fountain on the corner of Main and Mesquite before Lenny needed to stop for a spell and take a drink—that was my story, and I was sticking to it. As I sat on the curb, waiting for him to finish, my phone began to vibrate.

  “Jo Jo,” Aunt Linda cried.

  “Here.” At the panic in her voice, I jumped to my feet. “I’m here!”

  “They came to the house.”

  “Yip, yip,” Lenny barked, hearing my aunt’s fear mirrored in my own voice.

  “Ssh,” I scolded.

  “That new one,” Aunt Linda continued. “What’s his name? Barnes? Barnett? Oh, heck fire, if I know.”

  “Whoa. Who came?” I started flipping in my mind through the names of her friends, most of them members of the Broken Boot Community Church—then it hit me. “A deputy stopped by. Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes, yes.” She raised her voice in frustration. “They took her. I told him I’d have his job before he could whistle ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas.’ Your Uncle Eddie didn’t play football with Mayor Cogburn for nothing.”

  “They took Senora Mari?” A few months ago, my abuela tried to rescue Anthony from a murder charge by admitting to a crime she hadn’t committed.

  “No, hon.” There was a barely perceptible change in my aunt’s voice, but I caught it just the same.

  The other shoe dropped. “What does he want with Patti?” Like a flash of lightening beneath my skin, I could feel the blood in my veins surge to the surface. “Are they still there?” I scooped Lenny back into the bag.

  “No, but they just left. You can still catch them.” There was a pause, and then arguing in the background.

  “Josefina?” Senora Mari asked, as if I were an impostor with nothing better to do than pretend to be her almost granddaughter. Or perhaps she thought her daughter-in-law was not to be trusted with knowing who was on the phone.

  “Abuela?” I was impatient to catch Patti, but I knew better than to reveal it in my speech. Senora Mari required the utmost respect.

  “Pick me up by the gate. I’m ready.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll be waiting outside in the hot sun.” I could have argued. I could have tried to cajole her into doing anything other than accompanying me on my mission to rescue Patti—for that was what I was going to do. But I might as well argue with a goat found chewing up a sheet as it hung on a clothesline.

  “Five minutes, but you’re only along for the ride.”

  “Humph. I’m along to make sure justice is done.”

  Five minutes later, I squealed up to the home of the only family I’d known since I was twelve: Aunt Linda, Uncle Eddie, and Senora Marisol Martinez. It was a ’70s ranch in the far West Texas style: brick veneer and textured stucco, rustic wooden shutters, a red door with decorative tin imprinting, and a yard full of indigenous plants and grasses. Only a fool or the very rich bothered with the deep lawns of Dallas or Austin on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert.

  Senora Mari wore a cotton dress of bright pink with a brown woven leather belt and woven leather sandals, otherwise known as her summer church attire.

  She walked purposefully toward my Prius and slid in, being careful to hold her skirt down as she did.

  I made a show of shaking my head. “I thought you only wore that dress to church.”

  “I am not dressed for church.” She sniffed and lowered the visor to inspect herself in the mirror. “I am wearing my flat sandals.” She returned the favor by closely inspecting my outfit of teal capri pants and matching tank top with Keep Austin Weird airbrushed across the chest. She waved a dismissive hand over my ensemble. “You think this getup will impress the sheriff?”

  “I don’t need—”

  “You will not impress this man with . . .” She wrinkled her nose in disgust as if my clothing smelled of rotten eggs. “You want to make a good impression, not invite him to drink with you at the bar.” She nodded emphatically as she reapplied her dark-red lipstick, took a tissue out of her bag, and blotted her lips. Slowly, she raised her eyebrows. “Or do you want to invite a certain deputy to drink with you?”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s all kinds of not true, at least not in this century.”

  “You need to use that brain of yours.”

  When I stopped at the first Stop sign, I managed to raise an eyebrow at her in return.

  She pursed her lips and studied my chest again. “Look at yourself the way the sheriff and his men will look at you.”

  “And I should care what they think because . . . ?” Unfortunately, it sounded as though Senora Mari thought the sheriff and his deputies would consider me a woman of little consequence and nothing more. I was tired of trying to measure up to some masculine ideal. Wasn’t my o
pinion of my appearance the one that mattered?

  “Humph. Will they see you as a girl interfering in their business or will they see a strong, respectable woman from a good family with the right to know what they are doing?”

  I glanced down at my ensemble. “Abuela—”

  “No.” She raised a hand. “What is my name, Josefina?”

  I sighed. Once she decided to play the matriarch card, there would be no budging her unless I conceded to the formalities. “Senora Martinez?”

  “Senora Mari will do, por favor.”

  With a whimper, I bit the inside of my cheek to keep my tongue from lashing out. “Senora Mari, I was dressed for my run. Do you want me to go back and change?”

  I’d made sure to match and to wear the colors that suited me best when I’d started out. My clothing had been the furthest thing from my mind when I’d bolted for Milagro, thrust Lenny in Aunt Linda’s arms, and driven to Casa Martinez like Dale Jr. on the back stretch of the Texas Motor Speedway.

  “Don’t worry.” She patted my knee. “I am here.” Her lipstick, Sunday dress, and leather bag all said, Watch out. I mean business.

  At the next Stop sign, I craned my neck to search the side streets for the sheriff’s cruiser that had taken Patti. “How long ago did they leave?”

  She shrugged a shoulder and clicked the tip of her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Ten minutes. Fifteen?”

  “How did they know where to find her?” Patti had left my apartment only moments before Lenny and I had set out on our abbreviated run.

  No answer. I shot a glance at Senora Mari to ask again, but she had turned her face to the passenger window, as if memorizing every fence post and cactus.

  I raced onto the highway, only to end up behind a truck carting hay bales. The vehicle was so old and low to the ground that I expected the hay bales to roll out the back and smash my hood like giant bowling balls.

  I honked the Prius’s neurotic horn and zoomed around the truck, narrowly avoiding a roadrunner sprinting hell-for-leather across the road. Before moving to far West Texas, I’d thought a roadrunner looked like the one in Saturday-morning cartoons, but the real McCoy was quite a different story: no more than twelve inches high, weighing maybe four pounds, and without the signature beep-beep. I turned my head in time to see him disappear through the scrub of tumbleweed and grass.

  As we whizzed by the open fields, the play of the sun on the tops of the mountains caught my eye. Like a warm, sun-dappled stream, the peaks danced in the embrace of the sun, adding grandeur to the sparse vegetation on their flanks.

  The road stretched on for miles with no sign of anything except for the heat mirage of water already at work on the steaming asphalt.

  “Slow down before you wrap this car around a fence post.”

  “Did someone tell the sheriff’s office where to find Patti?”

  “No. I told that female deputy, the one who orders at Milagro so politely.”

  “Deputy Pleasant? You told her?” I tried without succeeding to keep my voice calm.

  “She called the house and asked to speak to your friend.” She sighed. “Can I help it if I forgot she was an officer of the law?” A spasm of nervousness crossed her face as she spied the odometer.

  To my surprise, the dial indicated I was cruising at a mere ninety miles per hour. I lifted my foot from the gas and drew a deep breath. “Patti wouldn’t hurt a fly.” I hesitated. It was true that in middle school she had been known as Perez the Punisher, but that was only by pimply boys who thought her Goth mystique meant she was free with her favors. As if she would be willing to walk on the wild side with any of them dumb enough to ask.

  “Estupido.”

  “You said it.” Everyone who knew Patti knew that she had done more than take over the Feed and Supply after the death of her parents. She’d brought her own style and artistic sensibilities, turning the Feed and Supply into more of a market of farm goods and local artists’ wares: jewelry, clothing, yard art, and high-quality, if quirky, boots and ranch wear.

  After five minutes, I squeezed my phone from my pants pocket and handed it to Senora Mari. “Look up Lightfoot’s number.”

  She studied the dark surface of the phone and frowned. Before I could offer an explanation on how to turn it on, she began to pound it against the dash.

  “Hey!”

  “What? I am waking it up.”

  Before I was forced to pay yet another phone deductible, I grabbed my cell from her and hit the Refresh button. When the screen reawakened, I managed to tap the Contacts button while keeping one eye on the road. “Here.”

  A deep furrow appeared between her eyes, which meant she considered my reaction both unnecessary and excessive. “I can do it.”

  I bit my tongue and waited to see what she would do.

  “I hit the button. It’s dialing.”

  Just then, a chicken trailer appeared in the distance, driving slowly. “Blast. Well, tell him to hold on.” Confident that no one was on the road, I moved into the opposite lane to pass earlier than needed.

  “Hello,” Senora Mari said in her most proper voice.

  As I passed the semi filled with dirty white cluckers, a red sports car zoomed toward us from out of nowhere. I cursed.

  “Who is that?” Senora Mari asked imperiously.

  Hitting the brake as hard as I could without throwing us both through the front window, I darted back behind the chicken trailer as the red Corvette raced passed us, tooting its horn in a playful taunt.

  “Why are you on this phone? You are not Deputy Lightfoot.” Her voice held all the authority her four-foot-eleven frame could hold.

  “I’ll take that.” I reached for it, but she backed away toward her window.

  “No, I am not Josefina Callahan,” she sniffed, “but she has given me the use of this phone.” So stuff it, her tone implied. That was as close as she’d come to cussing.

  I passed the chicken truck this time without any other approaching vehicles in the opposite lane. Once I changed back into my lane, I reached around her and retrieved my phone.

  “This is Josie,” I said brightly, as if the person on the other line had called me. “To whom am I speaking?”

  “What the devil’s going on, Josie? I’m in the middle of a city-council meeting.” Mayor Cogburn was on the line and madder than a wet hen in a pig wallow.

  “I’m so sorry, mayor. Senora Mari must have misdialed.” Why he’d answer his cell during a council meeting was anyone’s guess.

  “Is everything all right?” he whispered.

  “Uh, no, but we can talk later. Shouldn’t you get back to the council?” The mayor was running for his second term in office. You would think he’d try to keep his best foot forward.

  “They’ve been discussing new school taxes for the past twenty minutes. How can I possibly support higher taxes and keep my job? Answer me that. I excused myself to the washroom while they hash it out.”

  Here was someone with the power to help us straighten out this mess. “Well, now that you mention it, they’ve taken Patti Perez to the county jail.”

  “Good God!”

  “Exactly, and she didn’t do it, Your Honor. It’s circumstantial, every bit.”

  “Of course it is.” There was an awkward silence.

  “Did you know ahead of time they were going to arrest her?”

  He cleared his throat. “No, not Patti Perez per se. I called Sheriff Wallace and told him to get back here, vacation or no vacation.”

  I sensed there was more to it than that. “And?”

  “We can’t have folks feeling scared to go about their business. For pity’s sake, we don’t want to be known as the murder capital of West Texas. I told him he’d better make an arrest and make one soon.”

  I glanced at Senora Mari, who was leaning in to catch every word
. “Loco,” she whispered as she twirled her finger in the age-old gesture for lunacy.

  “Circumstantial evidence doesn’t mean they can lock her up.”

  “Well, now, is that all they’ve got? That’s not the impression I received.”

  I bit my tongue . . . hard. I was madder than a yellow jacket in a lawn mower. And just like that winged yellow avenger, I wanted to sting the hell out of any man who’d throw my best friend in jail.

  “Jo Jo—”

  “Josie.” No one called me Jo Jo except for my immediate family. He’d better get that straight.

  “Uh, yes. Well, I do apologize, but I have to think of our residents and their need to feel secure in their own homes.”

  “I’m headed over to the county jail now. You’ll be hearing from me again if I find they’ve actually arrested her.”

  “Don’t you worry, darling. It will all turn out all right. Just keep your hat on.” His words should’ve been a comfort, but I heard his doubt, loud and clear.

  We slowed as we exited the highway, both of us searching for a cruiser that might be en route with Patti inside. The only vehicles we observed were a couple of white Chevy Suburbans that bore the name Big Bend Cowboy Church in gold filigree lettering on their sides.

  Inside the station, it was quiet as a museum. The volunteers who staffed the information booth had the day off, as well as the receptionist at the main desk. Signs led us past the public areas of city hall until the only arrows that remained were those pointing toward the sheriff’s office and the county jail.

  My breath grew short and my pulse raced. Patti Perez didn’t belong in jail. She was a part of this town. To bring her in like a common criminal was, well, criminal. We blasted into the sheriff’s private reception area and found no one at the desk.

  “Hello,” Senora Mari shouted. “Who’s there?”

  A young woman with hair as curly and red as Little Orphan Annie’s entered, wearing a receptionist’s headset. She swung the disconnected wire in one hand. “Sorry about that, y’all. Nature calls, you know?”

  She was probably all of eighteen. This was not the sheriff’s weekday Valkyrie, ready to protect him from all comers.