Faithful Unto Death (24 page)

I put my hand over her trembling fingers and held them still. I don’t know where Mai was at that moment, I didn’t know where the French came from, but she wasn’t sitting in a suburban wine bar on a sunny, mild March afternoon.

Mai recovered herself slowly. The waiter brought a glass of water and I set it in front of her. She drank from it, took a tissue from her purse, and moistened it on the perspiring side of the glass. She patted her face with the cool, damp tissue.

“Oh, my God,” Mai said, her voice back under control. “What time is it?” She lifted her wrist and looked at a nonexistent watch. “So late! I gotta go.”

She pushed her chair back and stood, one hand on the chair back. She laid a couple of twenties on the table but I folded them up and put them back in her purse. She didn’t notice.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” I asked. She didn’t look all that steady. She dug in her purse and withdrew her sunglasses and keys, perched the glasses on the tip of her nose.

“Mr. Wells, you didn’t ask me what you came here to ask me.” She took a step to the side and stepped off one high-heeled sandal; she nearly tumbled over but she caught herself with the back of the chair, adjusted the sandal, and looked at me; with her standing and me sitting, we were just about on eye level.

I hesitated.

“Did you kill Graham Garcia, Mai?”

She tilted her head back and laughed that rich, full laugh again and it ended in a long descending sigh. She looked me straight in the eyes.

“Oh, my God, Mr. Wells, I would gladly have laid down my life for Graham Garcia.”

Mai hefted her purse under her arm, and walked back toward the parking garage. She was unsteady at first, but as she got farther away from me, her gait grew longer and more confident.

She hadn’t answered the question.

Thirty

A
fter the waiter brought the bill for the wine and cheese—sixty-four dollars, not including the tip—I drank the rest of my wine and ate every last bit of bread and cheese, even the runny one. It was the principle.

The first thing I needed to do was find Alex Garcia and reassure him, now that I knew for certain, that what he had seen had been bad, but nowhere near as bad as he thought. His father had been an adulterer, but he wasn’t a pedophile.

I calculated the family would be home from the interment around seven, seven thirty. If I gave Alex time to greet the people who would be at the house preparing a meal for the family, I could speak with him at eight thirty or so. The day of your father’s funeral is a terrible time to have news dumped on you, but I didn’t want Alex thinking what he was thinking a second longer than he had to.

Once Alex understood, I also had to persuade him to go with me to speak to Detective Wanderley. Wanderley hadn’t met Mai, and didn’t have any idea what kind of strength her little body held. And with those stilettos, Mai would be at least, well, five-three. Maybe. Not that women wear stilettos on golf courses, even in Sugar Land. What her motive could be, I couldn’t guess, but she was clearly unstable—her motive might not be rational.

That left me plenty of time now to go home and make peace with Annie Laurie.

I would have, too, if her sister hadn’t been there.

Stacy occupied all the counter space in our kitchen with her Williams-Sonoma bags. Annie Laurie was taking a bowl of steamed edamame out of the microwave. Stacy was at the table pouring out two glasses of white wine, something from a bottle with a starfish on the label. Baby Bear had been locked out on the back porch because Stacy doesn’t like to get dog hair on her clothes.

Stacy and Annie Laurie look like sisters, and they don’t. Seeing Stacy with Annie Laurie is like hearing a familiar folk song covered by an avant-garde rock band. Stacy is two years older than Annie and dresses like she’s two decades younger. Their features are shaped the same except that Stacy’s are stretched, exaggerated. Her mouth is wider, her nose is longer, her eyes are bigger and rounder. Stacy is taller, thinner, and her boobs are bigger. Given the angularity of her hips, my bet is the boobs have been enhanced, but Annie won’t tell me.

Right now Stacy’s hair was the same honey-gold as Annie’s—their natural color. But I’ve seen Stacy’s hair a flaming red, platinum blond, deep mahogany. To make up for wearing her hair in its natural, and conventional, shade, Stacy had cropped it in a short, blunt, Cleopatra cut. Annie had changed from the dress she had worn to the funeral and was now wearing jeans, white Keds, and a button-down shirt. Stacy had on spike-heeled Gladiator sandals that laced nearly to her knees, and a formless shift of coarse fabric that made me think of sackcloth. Her earrings looked like a fold of chain mail and they brushed her shoulders.

“Bear!” Stacy cried when I walked in. “We were just talking about you! Hold on a sec, I’ll get you a glass.”

“No thanks,” I said and crossed over to peck Annie’s unresponsive cheek. “It’s barely five.”

Annie lifted her eyebrows and took the glass from Stacy.

“Hmmm. You smell like you’ve had a glass already, Bear,” Annie said.

“Oh! Yeah, I had a meeting . . . ah, at the Vineyard.”

Stacy slapped my shoulder, her faux ivory bangles clacking. “You dog. Elders’ meetings at wine bars—strange times coming to the Church of Christ.”

“No, I, uh . . .” Stacy talks too fast.

“Bear, we don’t care. Here.” Stacy grabbed another wineglass out of the dishwasher. “Tell me what you think of this.” She sloshed wine into the glass, filling it three-quarters full. “This is a New Zealand sauvignon blanc—Starborough—screw-off top, but don’t let that mislead you. All the New Zealand wineries are using screw-offs. It’s earth-friendly or some such garbage, but it doesn’t hurt the wine, only the presentation.”

“Listen, Stacy, if I could borrow Annie Laurie for a moment . . .”

“Oh, she’s not still mad at you. Or she won’t be after we’ve had a couple of glasses of wine and talked over all your bad qualities, and taken a second to list down your good ones,” Stacy said. “Drink that wine and tell me what you think of it. Go on, sit down, Bear, I want to show ya’ll my steals.”

Stacy doesn’t buy “deals.” Stacy buys “steals.” Shopping is a cross between a blood sport and an art form for Stacy. I didn’t need to see her purchases itemized to know that she had gotten at least seventy-five percent off on all of them—she won’t slow down for less than seventy-five percent off. Now, whether or not Stacy needed another pure linen, banquet-size, brocade tablecloth, which, even at seventy-five percent off, had cost two hundred dollars—that was between her and my long-suffering brother-in-law, Chester.

Annie was resolutely refusing to meet my eye, which seemed to me to mean that she might, indeed, need a couple of glasses of wine before she was ready to hear me out.

It’s hard enough talking to an unhappy woman without doing it when she is both unhappy with you, and unwilling to hear you. I decided it could keep and it turned out I was painfully correct.

It felt good to take off the suit I’d worn for the funeral. I shut the bedroom door so I could let Baby Bear in from the backyard, and he took a long, sloppy drink from the water bowl Annie keeps under the bathroom sink. He shook the water from his hairy cheeks and pushed his nose into my knees, muttering complaints about having been shut out of the kitchen when something like a party had been going on. I pulled his ears gently and explained that I, too, wasn’t welcome in the kitchen right now.

After I’d changed into jeans and a T-shirt and slipped on my sneakers sockless, I had a great idea.

Baby Bear loves to ride in the car. I’d take Baby Bear with me to the Garcias’; I could leave him in the car while I talked to Alex, or if Jo was still there, she could give Baby Bear a romp in the Garcias’ spacious yard while Alex and I talked. After I’d given Alex the news, and persuaded him to fill Wanderley in, I’d drop Jo and Baby Bear off at the house and swing by Wanderley’s office. Baby Bear is good company; he doesn’t go all hormonal on me.

I clicked a lead on Baby Bear’s collar to make sure no dog hair got on Stacy’s dress, which, come to think of it, looked like it could have been woven out of dog hair
and
sackcloth, told Annie Laurie my plan and that I expected to be back for dinner. She said why didn’t I pick up dinner since she didn’t think she would be cooking. I said fine and gave her another unreturned kiss.

I guarantee you that at any given time, Stacy knows more about the state of my marriage than I do. Stacy and Annie Laurie speak the same language—it’s a shorthand code that calls on years of history from before I was in Annie’s life. It doesn’t bother me. Stacy is good people and she likes me because, once a year or so, I can get her three heathen sons to sit down and listen. Most of the time she’s working on my behalf.

As I headed out to the garage, Baby Bear in tow, I said, “Stacy, if ya’ll are already on the second glass, please feel free to open another bottle. It looks like it’s going to take a third glass before Annie’s ready to stop being mad at me.”

Stacy said, “Shoot. I knew we should have made it martinis. I can convince Annie of anything once she’s had two martinis.”

I paused at the door. I may be the only Church of Christ minister who has to keep jalapeño-stuffed olives in the fridge for martinis, not cheese plates. For my sister-in-law.

“No martinis. You staying for dinner?”

Stacy shook her head.

“Nope,” she said. “Not unless you want Chester and the boys, too?”

I like Chester, and I love Stacy’s three sons, but having the boys over is like having three Jack Russell terriers on fast-forward. I was not up to it.

“Sometime soon,” I said, and shut the door. I grabbed two bottles of water from the garage fridge and Baby Bear and I were off.

Thirty-one

D
ogs are pure. Everything is on the surface—their feelings, their needs, their likes and dislikes. Baby Bear leaned his head out the open window and let his velvet ears flap in the wind. His joy was so infectious that I couldn’t help catching it. A good dog is a great help in mood control. I mean, I’m not moody, but everyone gets a little blue sometimes.

The Garcias’ capacious front yard gravel drive and gravel parking spaces can hold twenty or more cars. I had to park on the road. As I did, another car slid in behind me and a couple slipped out—the guy was in slacks, his tie loosened and his jacket folded over his arm. The woman wore a dress you’d either wear to church or a secretarial job. I looked down at my faded Gap jeans and sneakers and mentally slapped my forehead. Right. Honey would assume I was coming straight from the interment. So I would be dressed in jeans and a tee why?

There was nothing for it. I rolled the windows all the way down. Even in this mild weather, a closed car can heat up fast. With the windows well open, Baby Bear would stay plenty comfortable. I pulled out the foldable pet bowl I keep in the console, filled it with cold water from one of the bottles I’d grabbed, and set the bowl on the floor of the passenger side. Since Baby Bear was too big to fit in the passenger foot space, he had to hang his head down from the seat to drink, but he’d never found that to be a problem.

Because, at 180 pounds, Baby Bear was a large, a very large, ungainly fellow, I could leave the windows down without fear that someone would snatch him, and because he’s an obedient dog, in a general kind of way, I could say “Stay,” and know that he would. Now, Baby Bear had sense enough to get out of the car if it caught on fire, or started rolling down the street, or if a meteor hit me and he ran out of water. That’s why I could never bear to lock him up without an escape.

The gathering had spilled out onto the lawn and I shook lots of hands as I maneuvered through the stands of blooming azaleas. Found myself murmuring “Ran home to change” to a few faces that raised eyebrows over my informal dress.

The front door was open to the early evening air, and the clinking of glass and cutlery mingled with the rumble of many voices flowing out onto the porch.

The ladies of St. Laurence and the Church of Christ had plied the Garcias with casseroles and cakes, and had I been hungry, I could have helped myself to Gina Redman’s airy white rolls or Irene Hayden’s spectacular lemon chiffon pie. Nothing should taste that good. I decided to take a couple of Gina’s rolls before I left. I’d have taken a piece of the pie, too, if I could have wrapped it up in a paper towel.

Cruz was wearing the skirt and white blouse of her navy suit and, in place of the pillbox hat, had a square of white lace bobby-pinned to her hair. She held a tray filled with cups of coffee and she handed me a cup of coffee I didn’t want, looked me up and down, and said, “I didn’t see you at the cemetery.”

I nodded, and asked where I could find Alex and Jo.

She thought about pushing her question, decided against it, and said, “They’re in his room.” She gestured down a hall with her chin and said, “Third door on the left.”

There was a twenty-minute delay, with all the conversations I got pulled into, before I could head down the hall to Alex’s room. I passed the study and noticed the door was cracked. I don’t know why I did it, but I pushed the door open.

A large dark-haired man was sitting at Graham’s desk, going through his drawers. One of the suits from the funeral. He was intent and didn’t notice me.

I said, “Hey.”

Guy jumped like I’d touched him with a cattle prod.

“Looking for something?” I said, no smiles.

The guy looked wary.

“Honey said . . . I’m looking for some business papers; Graham was working on something for me. Honey said I could . . .”

I came all the way into the study and kind of squared myself out, the way you do on the line.

“Graham didn’t work for you. He may have worked
with
you. I don’t care what Honey said. Get out of Graham’s study.”

“Listen . . .” He put on some bluster but he didn’t wear it well. “Honey said—”

“Five seconds and I’m going to help you out.”

“Who the hell are you?” he said, slamming a drawer shut, grabbing a handful of papers and standing up.

I blocked him at the door. The guy went all puffer fish.

“I want to see your driver’s license,” I said.

“What are you, security? Honey hired security?”

In the space of a day, I’d been told I looked like a bouncer and mistaken for security. All that working out was worth it.

I reached behind him and plucked his wallet out of his pants pocket. He yipped like I’d goosed him, which I most assuredly had not. The name on his driver’s license was Bradford Williams. I thought about keeping the license but Wanderley might see that as Father Browning it.

The guy was getting himself worked up. I leaned into him. Only a little bit.

I said, “Walk down that hall and tell Honey you have to go. Don’t come back to this room. Don’t even think about coming back to this house. Not ever. And you should be expecting a call from Detective Wanderley.”

The guy’s red face paled.

“I don’t know who you—” he began, but I snatched the papers out of his hand and gave him a push to help him out the door.

He took a few steps backward, giving me the stink eye and thinking about carrying this further, but he was not stupid—lawyers never are, in my experience—and he thought better about it. Williams turned around and hurried down the hall.

I walked over and dropped the papers on Graham’s desk. A framed photo caught my eye and I picked it up. The picture showed the Garcia family on a sailboat. A gap-toothed Alex looked about six years old, wearing white swim shorts, his skin tanned brown and his hair sun-bleached. Graham had his arm around Honey. She had on a navy Bettie Page swimsuit, her red hair flying in the wind. Honey looked like a 1940s movie star. Jenasy was grinning up at the camera. I studied Graham. He had that Great Gatsby look that Ralph Lauren favors in his models. His smile was wide and easy. But the eyes. Was there a shadow there? Something unconnected, distant? Or was I getting all airy-fairy?

I looked at the glowing family a long time and then put the photo carefully back on the desk and locked the study door behind me.

Alex’s door was closed—Merrie and Jo are strictly forbidden to be in a guy’s bedroom with the door shut—so I knocked. I’m big on not putting myself in the way of seeing something I know for sure I don’t want to see.

No one answered and I knocked harder, and Alex yelled, “It’s open!” which it wasn’t, but it was unlocked and I walked in.

Alex was sitting on the floor, his back against the bed’s footboard, headphones the size of traffic controllers’ strapped to his ears. No Jo.

I said, “Where’s Jo?”

Alex looked up at me in surprise. He took the headphones off and pushed a button on a complicated-looking control panel. He stood up. He had changed his clothes, too. Like me, he was wearing jeans and sneakers; he still had the dress shirt on, but the neck was unbuttoned and the tail was out. His hair was loose around his neck.

“She left with Cara. They were going to Cara’s to change, then your house, I think. They’re planning to be back here later. I’ll have her home on time.”

“Well, all right,” I said. “It was you I wanted to talk to, Alex. You got a minute?”

He grimaced. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I looked around for a place to sit and settled in an easy chair covered in a flag print fabric. His bedspread was out of the same fabric and there were framed antique flags on the walls. The room was unbelievably tidy for an adolescent boy, but I assumed that was due more to Cruz’s ministrations than Alex’s.

“You collect flags?” I asked, gathering a pile of books from the seat of the chair.

Alex shook his head and sat down on his bed, one hand clasping the wrist of the other around his drawn-up knees.

“Nope,” he said. “The designer probably thought it was a nice, masculine theme I could grow into. Those flags”—he waved a hand at the tattered flags that were matted and framed around the room—“they aren’t really old or anything. They make the flags look that way on purpose.”

“Does that bother you?” Having this artificial décor chosen for him. I sat down on the flag chair.

He looked surprised again.

“What? No. What do I care what’s on the walls? I’m not some emo, get all bent out of shape over furniture. Are we going to talk about Jo?” His face was wary.

I was looking at one of the books I’d picked up.

“Huh.
Ender’s Game
. Jo has to read this, too.”

Alex smiled. “I know. That’s her book. I’m reading it to her.”

I snapped the book shut. “You’re what?” I’d heard what he said.

“I’m reading it to her. That’s why her English grade has gone up. That’s why all her grades have gone up. Because of me.” His smile wasn’t smug. It was beatific—the smile of a man who loves his job and is good at it.

“Why are you reading it to her? Why doesn’t she just read the book herself? Is that so hard?” I slapped the book shut and dropped it on top of the pile of books at my feet.

He looked at me like I’d asked for a cup of mouse droppings.

“Uh, yeah. It’s that hard if you’re freaking dyslexic.”

“Jo’s not dyslexic.” With my toe, I spread the pile of books out. They were all Jo’s.

“Yes, Mr. Wells, Jo is dyslexic.”

“I don’t believe it.”

He grinned at me and jumped off the bed to gather Jo’s books back into a neat pile.

“Just because you don’t believe, doesn’t mean it isn’t true, Mr. Wells. Didn’t I hear you say something like that from the pulpit?”

I hate it when people quote me to myself.

“All right, then, define dyslexia. The way the term is used today, it’s too broad to mean anything.”

“Ummhumm, okay, that’s fair. What is agreed is that the term covers people who process information differently from most of us. ‘Dyslexia’”—Alex made quote marks with his fingers—“pretty much applies to people who are smart, who’ve had every opportunity to learn, but still have trouble reading. Does that fit Jo?”

“What fits Jo is that it’s easier for her to use her pretty face to get a boy to do her homework for her than it is for Jo to do it herself.” My hands were kneading the arms of the easy chair. I forced myself to relax.

Alex looked up at me with his arms full of my daughter’s books. I decided I’d be taking those books home with me when I went.

“Did you just call Jo a whore?” Alex said. His face was rigid.

“Did I what!?”

“And a cheat. Think about what you just said, Mr. Wells. You said Jo trades on her looks for favors, and you said I was doing her work for her. A whore and a cheat.”

“I never—”

“You need to be careful how you talk about Jo. You need to be careful how you talk
to
Jo. She’s dyslexic. She is not stupid. She hears everything you say and she hears what you don’t say, what’s underneath your words. She hears it, Mr. Wells, and you are sowing the wind and you will reap the whirlwind.”

It’s encouraging that young people can quote scripture. I’m not all that thrilled with the way they’ve been quoting it to
me
.

I spread my hand out and touched my index finger.

“In the first place, Alex—”

“Don’t do the finger thing.”

“What?”

“You aren’t counting off sermon points. Talk to me. Don’t preach at me. I hate that finger thing even when you do it from the pulpit. It makes you sound like you’re talking to a first grade class.”

Big breath as I tucked that away to consider later. I put my hands on my knees.

“Not in one million years would I call Jo a whore or a cheat or allow a man to continue to stand if
he
did.”

Alex opened his mouth and I held my hand up.

“However, I take your point about being more careful about my words. I’ll do that. I’ll try, okay?”

He nodded.

“If Jo let’s you do her work for her—”

“I don’t do her work for her! Excuse me, Mr. Wells, but get a freaking clue!” Alex slammed the pile of books down on his desk. “I read her assignments to her; I do a lot of her writing. I mean like, I take dictation. All the thoughts, all the words, those are Jo’s.”

“Then what does she need you for?”

“She can’t read the books! Can’t you get that? She’s dyslexic! Do you think Jo’s stupid? Because if she’s not dyslexic, if there isn’t something different about the way her brain works, then why can’t your kid read?”

“She can read!”

“Have you
heard
her? When’s the last time you heard Jo read? She sounds like a fourth grader—like a slooooow fourth grader. How do you think that makes her feel at school? Especially with Miss Merrie Hotshit and her straight A’s blazing trails through Clements ahead of her.”

I felt my face grow hot.

“If Jo needed some extra help with her schoolwork, she could get that at home. For crying out loud, her mom designs lessons,” I said.

Alex turned his desk chair around and sat on it backward, straddling the back, his arms crossed over the top of the chair back.