Kissing Arizona (27 page)

‘I will be very careful.' Really, Vicky thought, it was impossible not to sound like an idiot when you were talking to Ynez. She turned her collar up and closed her eyes so Ynez would think she was asleep. Behind her eyelids, she considered the little girl again, the one who had been watching her in the kitchen. Vicky's reaction to her had come from a lifetime of training – ‘Anglos always think Mexicans steal,' her mother had warned her, ‘stay away from them if you can.'

Now, though, she thought, Maybe she just wanted to be friendly
.
Small and plain, a little . . . underfed looking, actually, for an American girl, she certainly seemed harmless.
Why was I so rude to her?
She had often wished she had some Anglo friends, but whenever the chance came along she grew defiant and turned away.
If I want to succeed here, I should get over that.

On Saturday morning, riding north-west in Tía Luisa's van under an overcast sky, she decided,
If I see her again I will smile and say hello. After Tía Luisa leaves, of course.

She had already managed to get Ynez transferred to Elena's crew.

When she first mentioned it Tía Luisa got, not exactly angry but . . . grumpy. She said, ‘So, already you want to run the business, do you? Luz was right, you are the pushy one.'

‘And Luz is the whiny one.' It popped out before she could stop herself. She waited, expecting a reprimand, but saw something that might be amusement in Tía Luisa's eyes. So she took a chance. ‘Ynez could work better if she was not so afraid.'

‘She will always be afraid, her husband is a beast.' Luisa banged some pots around on the stove and finally said, ‘But you are right, she likes to work with Elena. You notice things, eh? Perhaps we will get along.'

So Vicky got to partner with Ana, who was noisy and profane but cleaned tile and glass like an angel from heaven. Vicky was going to watch
her
now and learn how she did it.

In the van on the way to the job she decided,
It might be good practice, being friendly with this Anglo girl. Start with a small one, maybe they are easier.

The house in Marana was set in a street of houses that all looked exactly the same.
They must have to memorize their house numbers the first day.
But all the streets looked alike, too, you would need a map in your hand to live here.

Inside, the house was nice, though, with comfortable-looking furniture and clusters of family pictures on the walls. The weak-looking granny who was telling them what to do today was the same one they had met in the smaller house. She looked much younger in the ranch pictures, smiling across many animals. There was a handsome man, probably her husband, who looked at her as if he wanted a bite. Vicky thought resentfully, This lady never had to sneak across a border to make a living. Looking at her today, though, how carefully she moved, you had to guess things had not gone so well for her lately.

The little girl was here too, with a man who must be her father, except they seemed too polite. They carried out a chair that he loaded into the pickup in the driveway while she came back in for two kitchen stools. Vicky watched her covertly. She was being careful to keep her distance today.

Tía Luisa told Vicky to start in the kitchen, and got Ana going in the bathrooms. Eduardo brought in everything they would need from the van, and vacuumed the hall while Tía Luisa got final instructions from Granny and collected, as usual, in cash. She always asked for cash payments and usually got them. Vicky was amused to see that most Anglo homeowners, in spite of the angry signs they sometimes carried and the stories they told reporters, gladly paid Mexican day laborers in cash, assuming they had no bank accounts and no social security cards. A long-time citizen like Tía Luisa simply exploited this loophole to save on the taxes.

When the talk was over, Eduardo drove Tía Luisa to the next job site. Getting this job in Marana had emboldened her to slide brochures under the windshield wipers of cars in several parking lots. Now she was going to talk to the two homeowners who had called her. Vicky could see she was proud to be getting new accounts in this suburb. It was farther to drive but the houses were new and easy to clean. She could earn more with fewer employees.

When they were gone the granny asked them to finish up in her bedroom first so she could lie down. While she was resting the little girl took a book to the shaded patio at the back of the house, where she curled in a chair and read.
Always reading, does she
have no friends? When does she play?
Carrying the kitchen trash can, Vicky stepped out the back door and stopped a few feet from Denny's chair.

‘Excuse me, I need to clean this trash can,' she said. ‘May I ask you, where is the hose?'

‘Oh, it's . . . um . . . right around the corner, I think. I'll show you.' She left her book on the chair seat and walked around the corner of the house, where she stopped, embarrassed. ‘Must be the other corner.' She trotted across the back of the house. ‘Yeah, here it is.' Screwed onto an outlet that came out of the foundation, it was coiled in a terra cotta bowl. ‘You turn it on here, see?'

‘You must not live here all the time,' Vicky said, spraying the trash can inside and out. It had contained a plastic liner and was not dirty at all when she started. But the water spray kicked up a lot of dust and gravel, and soon the outside of the trash can was quite dirty. ‘Oh damn,' Vicky said, and then, ‘Sorry.' She could not seem to get the spray turned off.

‘Here, let me help you,' Denny said, and turned off the hose at the outlet. She laughed. ‘You must not clean houses all the time either.'

‘No, I . . .' She looked around guiltily, afraid she heard someone coming.

‘Stay there, I'll get some paper towels.' She darted in through the door and was back in an instant with a whole roll. ‘Let's go back to the patio, it's kind of muddy out here.'

Up on the dry brick, they wiped down the plastic can. ‘This is my grandmother's house,' the little girl said. She was friendly again, she seemed to enjoy helping people. ‘She got sick, so now she's going to sell this house and live with us.'

‘Ah. Too bad.' To Vicky, it sounded like crowding and hard times.

‘Oh, no, it's going to be . . . it's a nice house. You'll see it next week, I guess. You seem to be cleaning all our places.'

‘So many houses,' Vicky said. ‘You must be very rich.'

‘Hardly.' The little girl seemed to find that idea comical. ‘But Aunt Sarah says we're better off now that we –' she thought, wiggling her skinny little butt – ‘pooled our resources.' She grinned, wrinkling her nose. ‘All the grown-ups did, anyway. I don't have any resources.'

Pooled our resources? Anglos talk such crazy shit.
Vicky said, ‘What's your name?'

‘Denny. What's yours?'

‘Victoria Nuñez.' Denny had trouble with the
nyuh
in the middle, so Vicky said it again a couple of times until she got it. When she was smiling, happy about learning something new, Vicky asked her, ‘Want to make a trade?'

‘Sure. What?'

‘You tell me where you got that blouse, I'll show you how to clean an oven.'

FOURTEEN

‘
W
e're moving out of this house today,' Aggie told Sarah a few days later. ‘Howard's coming in from the ranch with the stock truck to help Will move the big pieces. Howard and Will are turning into a team, can you imagine that?'

‘Two silent men. I wonder what they talk about when we're not there?'

‘Fishing, if Howard has anything to say about it. Anyway we'll be sleeping in Blenman-Elm tonight if all goes well. Check with me before you leave work.'

‘OK. Is Will's cleaning crew doing the job to your satisfaction?'

‘Boy, are they. Couple of them are at the new house right now, cleaning around everything as fast as we bring it in. Then they'll all come back out here tomorrow so we can leave my empty house looking brand new.'

‘Terrific. You think the girl is old enough to be working?'

‘Or here legally? Both good questions. Will says the woman who runs the crew came recommended by one of his men on the night shift. I'm paying cash and asking no questions. When we get done with this move and have time to catch a breath, Sarah, you can investigate all you like. But for now, since you've taken to working seven days a week, I strongly urge you to concentrate on your job and leave this end to us.'

‘Point taken and I'm happy to comply. I hope we're not wearing you out, though. Will and I dreamed up this move so we'd be available to help you, and now you're saving my bacon once again. What's wrong with this picture?'

‘Don't worry about that, I'm hardly lifting a finger. I sit and give orders like a queen to Will and these cleaners all day, and for evenings and weekends there's Denny, my good right arm. You want irony, consider the fact that you and I set out to help
her
. Now she's the chief cook and bottle washer.'

‘I know. Let's think of it as adding life skills, shall we? It sounds more respectable than just putting the kid to work.'

‘In a way it is a life lesson. That girl on the cleaning crew has captured Denny's imagination – she's discovered a life more torn up than her own. She told me, “Vicky's mom's in Mexico and she can't find her dad.”'

‘Hmm. That argues for Undocumented, doesn't it?'

‘You can't fix everything, Sarah. Go to work.'

‘You do not want to hear about my weekend,' Sarah said, and then told the homicide crew all about it, with special emphasis on the effort to get the box out of the hole. ‘And that was all on Saturday. Now, Sunday . . . I'm sorry about blowing the budget, boss.'

‘Two crime scene techs and a detective on overtime? Don't mention it.' Delaney punished his gum, looking pained. ‘I'm going to try for a refund from the Feds, but we better not have any more emergencies till I work something out.'

‘And getting me a search warrant signed on a Sunday morning, that was above and beyond.' Sarah was spreading it on a little thick, because she wanted his okay for her trip today. The weekend had been all for the box-o'-bones caper, even less popular with Delaney now than it had been to start with. Today was serious business, a solid lead in the Cooper case. ‘It's a good thing,' she told her crew-mates, who were looking increasingly cynical, ‘that we've got a boss who knows an understanding judge.'

‘Especially when he's losing big on the golf course,' Delaney said. ‘He was glad to get in out of the sun, he settled right down in the bar after he signed our warrant.'

‘The other big-budget item was that Ojeda guy's hollow leg,' Sarah said. ‘So far he's into us for two pizzas and a cheesesteak with curly fries. Besides that Wendy's Super-Value meal he ate Saturday night while he sold us on the Sunday house hunt.'

‘I must say,' Delaney said, ‘it was worth a trip across town to see the way Coomassie Blue made those bloodstains bloom in the bathroom. Hard to believe all that blood came from one man.'

‘Maybe it didn't,' Sarah said. ‘I mean, all over the kitchen too? And the place was so clean when we went in. That's what made me sure he'd led us to the right address. That old, old house so spotless.'

‘Apparently they never rent it out.'

‘No. It's their safe house, Ojeda said. Safe meaning radically dangerous – they kept it for when they needed to kill somebody.'

‘The lab crew's finding DNA in all the cracks, they say. We may solve some cold cases off of this. So, what's next? Let's go around,' Delaney said. ‘Leo?'

‘Got a date to talk about money with Nicole Cooper.'

‘Ah. Are you going there or is she coming here?'

‘I just made the appointment and said I'd let her know about the venue. I'm pretty sure we're looking at tax evasion, but do we want to look at it very hard? I mean, if we liked her a lot for the murders . . . but I've checked with the friends she told us she was with that night. Very substantial people. Her alibi looks pretty solid.'

‘Which doesn't mean she wasn't in on it. But . . . OK, you just want to squeeze her about the money and see what pops out?'

‘That was my thinking, yeah. And we've got more leverage, haven't we, if I don't have her on a CD confessing to tax fraud?'

‘Leave her some wiggle room,' Delaney said. ‘I agree. I mean, we could easily prove embezzlement too, but the way things have turned out she was just stealing from herself. So, a nice visit in her office and see if she cries on you?'

‘For my sins, I get punished this way,' Leo said.

‘Fine, who's next? Ollie, I read some of your transmits from Yuma, you got some good stuff, huh?'

‘Think so. I need a couple of days to find corroboration here, can Oscar help me with that? Good, because if my Yuma stories prove out we can hang the stash house on the Solteros too.'

‘Aren't we the best little helpers DEA ever had? And Sarah, I suppose you're going to be down there at the lab with Phil Cruz and the head all day, huh?'

‘I did plan to do that, I told Phil I'd be there. But now I'm wondering . . . is it OK if somebody else takes that? Jason said he's got some time.'

‘And I haven't had enough experience staring at skulls,' Jason said, patting his head, trying to make it sound like a joke because he actually had quite limited experience with detached body parts, and he had puked at his first autopsy. He both wanted and dreaded this day.

‘Why can't you go?' Delaney asked Sarah.