The White River Killer: A Mystery Novel (13 page)

At long last, complete thoughts stormed their way into Hubbard’s head—
What-the-hell?
I mean what-the-hell?
More meaningful concepts followed:
Your mouth is open. Close it
. What had Mr. Carlos done to him? He had expected a woman with a careworn face who would dispense motherly advice and help nurture Emily. Instead Mr. Carlos sent him a beautiful young woman? What kind of bait-and-switch was that?

Her hair was cropped shorter than most Latino women he had met, dancing lightly across her neck and shoulders. Her legs were long, almost endless . . .

She was a terrible disappointment.

Hubbard realized belatedly that Luis stopped speaking. He forced his eyes away from the surprising Mrs. Espinoza, and nodded a greeting to her. “How ya doing?” he mumbled, and turned back to Luis.

Luis Espinoza glared at him with an expression that Hubbard interpreted as:
You son-of-a-bitch, I know what you’re thinking about my sister.

Hubbard attempted a facial expression that countered that implied message with:
I’m not thinking anything. Just greeting a new employee like any employer would.
He gave up on that.

The girl had to go. He needed an older woman—an unattractive woman in her twilight years would be perfect. “You know, on second thought,” Hubbard said, hoping he’d find an easy way to do this.

A glint of sunlight off metal drew Hubbard’s eyes to Luis’s left wrist. He glanced first, and then did a double take, as if he doubted the reality of what he had just seen. Luis brought his left arm down quickly behind the door, out of sight.

Hubbard focused on Maria’s brother, trying to read his furtive expression. Luis shifted his eyes away, avoiding his gaze. “Do you have the time?” Hubbard asked.

Maria’s brother looked at the watch on Hubbard’s arm.

“My watch is slow,” Hubbard explained.

Luis snapped his fingers and pointed at the seat. “Pablo,” he said.

Hubbard stepped closer to the door. “Is it three, yet?” He glanced to his left. Emily was leading Maria Espinoza into the house. They were chattering in Spanish like old friends.

Luis started the truck and it was moving away, even though Luis’s nearsighted buddy had barely gotten into it.

Luis called from his open window as he drove off. “We’ll pick Maria up at six.”

Hubbard watched the truck crunch down the gravel drive and tried to visualize what he saw for only a split-second. Was Luis wearing a Rolex? A twenty-four-karat gold, $50,000 watch? Just like the one taken from Amir’s body?

13

K
ILLING
T
IME

H
UBBARD WATCHED
L
UIS’S TRUCK
grumble down the rocky driveway until it was hidden by the pine trees lining the road. His previous notion that Luis sported Amir’s Rolex on his arm seemed absurd. No one was so damn stupid that he’d take an expensive watch from his victim and wear it brazenly around town.

It wasn’t a Rolex. It was something else. Nevertheless, to be sure, when Luis returned to pick up Maria; he’d make it a point to see the gold timepiece again.

How did things get so messed up with this girl-woman in his house? He replayed the conversation with Mr. Carlos from the previous day. He didn’t recall anything that might’ve warned him “Mrs. Espinoza” was not what he expected. Usually, Mr. Carlos had a knack for putting the right person in the correct position. He really screwed up this time.

Hubbard headed inside to see what Emily and
Mrs. Espinoza
were doing. It didn’t seem wise to let Emily get too attached to the Guatemalan girl since he’d be letting her go.

Excited giggling floated through the screen door. Well, what did he expect? The young woman was probably close to Emily’s age.

In the kitchen, the two females had removed several bowls from the cupboards. Flour and other baking ingredients from the pantry were spread across the kitchen table. Emily was holding a glass measuring cup with awed reverence, as if she had been entrusted with the Holy Grail.

And Mrs. Espinoza—it was crazy to think of her as Mrs. Espinoza. Did she marry in grade school only to be widowed in high school? No. It was
Maria
who was checking out the kitchen drawers.

Emily flew to Hubbard and grabbed his hand, pulling him to the kitchen table. His daughter looked as if she was about to come apart at the seams from glee overload. “Guess what we’re doing, Daddy?”

They parted as Maria came between them carrying a set of measuring spoons in her hand. She flashed a smile at Hubbard that produced unexpected results. He felt blood rushing hither and yon in his body, assembling for action.

He looked away and focused on Emily. “I don’t know. What?”

“We’re making Daddy Cookies!”

Hubbard’s forehead creased. “You’re making what?”

“Daddy Cookies!” Emily seemed pleased she surprised him, nodding as if she felt the need to confirm the reality of the wonderful news. “They have those cookies in Guatemala.”

“They do?” Hubbard looked at Maria, puzzled. The girl-woman glanced at him in a charming way, shy, yet flirtatious, which was disconcerting. Did she intuitively understand that Hubbard had made them up? Are Daddy Cookies a real thing in Guatemala? He warned himself to avoid looking directly at her, especially into her eyes. Her eyes were nothing but trouble.
Keep your mind on the game, Hubbard.

He returned his attention to Emily. “How can you make cookies without a cookie dough tube from the store?”

“I don’t know, but Maria knows how.”

Hubbard wanted to ask her how she could do that trick. But she was leaning over the table opening a sack of flour. The neckline of her blouse revealed . . .
You have to get out now. Your daughter is in the house.

“I’ve got some work that needs to be done right away. Emily, I want to talk to Maria’s brother when he comes to pick
her
up . . . Maria . . . Up.”

Emily looked at him quizzically. “Okay.”

Hubbard left the kitchen and made his escape. When he was safely on the small wooden back porch, he took a deep breath.

Now he had to find something to do. He would fill the time by adjusting the valves on his two water pumps to increase their pressure so they would have enough power to push water across wide fields.

As he hiked toward the irrigation equipment, he remembered his conversation with Emily about the parade of new male visitors she encountered at her mother’s breakfast table. He blamed himself that Emily had to deal with these strange men coming and going from her life.

During the divorce proceedings, he had been so unsure of his ability to raise Emily properly that he didn’t fight hard enough for her. His only option now was to force a rematch; and there was only one man who could help him accomplish that miracle: His uncle.

His stomach churned as he considered asking R.J. for help. He had avoided all of his uncle’s offers of support since he was old enough to be on his own. In fact, the last time he asked for R.J.’s assistance was when he was seventeen and begged to go to Montreal for an entire summer to improve his French, a key part of his plan to escape from Hayslip.

Today would mark the first time he went to that bottomless well since the trip to Canada. He took a heavy breath and expelled air through pursed lips. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. It lay heavy in his hand.

He hoped he had gained a temporarily reprieve when his call went unanswered through several rings. He was about to click off when his uncle came on the line.

“This is R.J.” The voice was smooth and assured, as if it was your lucky day to be speaking to him.

“Hi, uh, this is—”

“Kid, I know who you are.” Hubbard heard a smile behind R.J.’s words.

“Yeah . . . I don’t know why I said that. Um . . . listen . . . uh . . .” Hubbard cleared his throat.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, of course.” Hubbard’s mouth went dry.

“Good . . . I’m fine, too.”

“Um . . .” Hubbard swallowed hard and began. “Remember back when I was getting a divorce and you said I could hire a nice, respectable lawyer that I could afford, or retain a hired gun that was a world-class son-of-a-bitch.”

“Yeah,” R.J. dragged his reply out, like a singer holding a song’s ending note. His uncle knew where this was heading.

Hubbard sucked in some air and jumped from the high diving board. “Will you hook me up with the son-of-a-bitch?”

There was a pause on the line. Hubbard wondered during the long silence if R.J. was going to play the “I told you so” card.

Instead, R.J. said, “What took you so long?”

When the call was over, Hubbard returned the phone to his pocket and gazed across a field of soybeans at an orange sun beginning its descent. His hand rubbed the stubble becoming a shadow on his chin. He knew the forthcoming terms for payback would be dear.

A deal was a deal. A daughter was a daughter.

For almost two hours, Hubbard adjusted the pump pressure up and down, trying to find the sweet spot on the valve. Unfettered, the machines pulling spring water from a large pond behind his house were powerful enough to overfill and burst a fire hose.

Emily called from the back porch. “Dad-dy, the cook-ies are read-y!”

Hubbard looked at his watch, then back at Emily. She was about fifty yards away, hopping back and forth from one foot to the other, almost as excited as if she had been awarded the honor of announcing the victorious outcome of a great battle that saved the nation.

“O-kay,” Hubbard shouted back. When was the last time he had seen her so happy about anything?

Hubbard entered the house and washed his hands before going into the kitchen. He tried not to laugh when he saw that his daughter’s face, hands and clothes were covered in a fair amount of white flour. He glanced at Maria, who was washing dishes. His gaze drifted to the curves of Maria’s backside until he became aware of Emily, studying her father’s face with too much interest.

He looked down at columns of daddy cookies, aping their pose from gingerbread men. He had to admit, they did look better-looking and somewhat younger than the traditional cookie-men.

“The ones at the edge of the plate are still hot,” Emily warned.

“Did you make all these?”

“With Maria’s help,” Emily said, graciously including the other member of the team.

Hubbard picked a cookie off the plate and under Emily’s attentive gaze took a bite. Maria swung around from the kitchen sink, drying her hands on a towel, monitoring his reaction as well.

The cookie was hot, moist, and chocolaty, not the chewy concoction he typically burned in the oven during his rare attempts as a chef. “Wow,” he said, genuinely impressed. “These are way good. Why do people use cookie dough tubes? Does Pillsbury know about this?”

He glimpsed Maria, and he knew he needed to say something. “Tres bien . . . Bueno,” he said. He corrected himself again. “Mucho Bueno.”

Emily apparently felt compelled to translate his rotten Spanish. When Emily finished, Maria smiled at Hubbard and nodded. Hubbard picked up the cookie plate and he offered it to Maria, “Um . . . s’il vu . . . por favor.”

Emily started to interpret again, but stopped when her dad flashed an exasperated expression in her direction.

Maria took a cookie. Hubbard noticed her long fingers tapered to a conclusion of pink nail polish.

Emily tugged at his shirt several times to get his attention. “Daddy . . . Daddy, did you know there’s a man who looks just like you on TV?” Emily’s head bent to the side, peering around Hubbard.

“Who? What?” Hubbard swung around. The TV was visible through the kitchen doorway, playing silently in the den. There was a shot of the Hayslip town square that cut to a two-shot of Hubbard and the sweating reporter from earlier in the day. A title graphic appeared underneath his image: John R. Hubbard, Hayslip Farmer.

“That
is
you,” Emily cried out, pointing at the TV, and bouncing up and down with excitement.

Hubbard grabbed a TV remote control lying on the kitchen table and turned up the volume. As the sound level increased, he could hear the reporter’s voiceover. “Some residents expressed disappointment at the pace of the investigation.”

Hubbard’s was next. In a new angle, his back was to the camera. “I guess we all feel a sense of outrage.”

The live version of Hubbard’s mouth fell open.

“Why are you outraged, Daddy?”

A tight shot of Hubbard’s face appeared on the screen. “I don’t know what the state police are doing. They haven’t said anything.”

Hubbard didn’t remember being angry, but he sure looked pissed on TV.

“Why aren’t the state police saying anything? Saying anything about what?”

A truck horn announced Luis’s arrival. Maria took off her apron and grabbed a sheet of paper off the white-tiled kitchen counter. She handed it to Emily, whispering something that made Emily grin. Maria brushed past Hubbard smelling like chocolate and wantonness.

It took a moment for Hubbard to regain his senses. “Um, nothing, honey. They made it sound like I said something I didn’t really say. It’s nothing to worry about. Probably no one watched it.”

The kitchen wall phone rang sharply. Hubbard jumped a bit.

“Do you want me to answer it?” Emily ran to the Caller ID display box on the kitchen counter. “It says ‘Ark State Police’.”

Hubbard rubbed his chin. “Um, no, let’s not answer it. Give me a minute.”

“Maybe they heard you were outraged at them and they want to say they’re sorry and make up.”

“May—be,” Hubbard said.

Emily looked at the paper in her hand. “We need to get all this at the store.”

“Get what? . . . What store?” He took the sheet from Emily and saw a long column of Spanish words.

“I can translate for us,” Emily said. “It’s a grocery list. Maria says we’ve got to have food in the house if we’re going to eat.”

Hubbard couldn’t remember the last time he made anything that required ingredients and instructions rather than the mindless punching of numbers on a microwave. He nodded. “Well, I suppose she’s right.”

“The phone’s still ringing.”

“Ignore it.”

Emily grabbed the list back from his hand, and took a deep breath, as if she was preparing to translate. The screen door slammed, and Hubbard remembered Maria was leaving. He clasped Emily by both of her shoulders. “You need to say goodbye to Maria,” he said, spinning her around and aiming her at the front of the house. “She’ll be upset if we don’t wave goodbye.”

Emily hopped, skipped and jumped to the door. Hubbard followed. Outside, Maria was in the old truck, sitting next to the surly teenager. The thought that she was romantically involved with the boy arose unexpectedly and he felt an unwelcome twinge of jealousy. Why the hell did he care?