Death of a Domestic Diva (23 page)

Billy looked at me then. And I told him everything, about the visit to Stillwater, about what had happened when we got back.

After I finished, he said, “I don't know what Tyra is up to at Stillwater, but I want you to come with me to meet someone. At least it'll help you understand a few things.”

Rosa walked in the bar then. I gave her a little wave, figuring she was going back to the kitchen to find Luke for her paycheck—the only reason I could figure Rosa, a truly Godfearing woman, would come in here. After all, every time I'd seen her even walk past the entrance to the bar, she'd crossed herself and muttered a prayer, eyes cast heavenward.

But Rosa came over to our table. She didn't sit down, but just stood and stared with an uneasy air at me, then looked at Billy.

“You ready?” he asked.

She nodded and cast another glance at me. “We can trust her?” she asked in her thick accent.

Billy didn't answer right off. Then he said, “Pretty sure.”

Now, this was real nice, I thought—Billy being the trusted one. Rosa—even Billy—doubting me. But I didn't say anything as I followed Billy and Rosa out. I had no idea what they were taking me to see or do, which made me nervous . . . and curious.

As it turned out, Billy rode with me and I followed Rosa's little blue Tercel.

“Where are we going?” I asked Billy after we'd driven about a mile or two north through the countryside.

“Rosa's house,” he said, without looking at me.

I didn't ask him why. I figured I'd find out soon enough. I flipped on my barely functioning radio to the one station I could get—Masonville's golden-oldies station, which played mostly songs from the mid-seventies through the late-eighties, covering the years from my birth through junior high—when I'd met Mrs. Oglevee. Thinking of her made me squirm. She'd surely view with disdain the activities of my day so far. I tried to focus on the song that was playing—something about a disco duck—and longed for a fully functioning radio that would pick up more than one station. I'd been promising myself a new car radio—one with a tape player so I could listen to books-on-tape, too—for a long time.

Another mile or two and I realized where we must be headed: Stringtown. That's about all that's directly north of Paradise, until you hit Columbus.

One of my theories of life is that every community likes to rank itself in relation to other communities, kind of the collective version of how some people can't resist comparing themselves to others. Masonville, a county seat with several fast food franchises and a four-lane strip of state highway, sees itself as one up on Paradise but of course not nearly as swank as Columbus, which is, after all, the state capital and intersected by three major interstate highways. Paradise casts a jealous eye north-eastward toward Masonville, but can always say it is doing quite a bit better than Stringtown.

Stringtown consists of ten houses along a narrow strip of county road, pinned down at one end by a bar, and at the other by a church of unaffiliated denomination. I suppose whenever its few residents need a one-ups-man-ship fix, they focus on the fact that Stringtown is the most convenient location for either sin or redemption for the farmers who live several miles around it (although, of course, for a good laundromat they have to come to my establishment in Paradise). As for the farming families around Stringtown, I don't think they really care what anyone else thinks of them.

Rosa's house was the tiniest in the strip, a one-story porchless clapboard painted a pale tan. It was also the best kept, with maroon shutters and door and windowboxes, and a large maple tree in the narrow front yard. Pink tulips and yellow daffodils bloomed in a neat circle under the tree.

Rosa pulled her Tercel into her gravel driveway, parking right behind a beat-up white truck. I recognized that truck. The couple must have fixed it—maybe with Billy's help. I pulled in behind Rosa, switched off my radio, and put my hand on Billy's forearm as he started to get out of my car.

“Billy, what's going on here?”

He looked at me. “Trust me, Josie,” he said. The last time he'd said that and looked at me that way, we'd been twelve years old and at the county pool over in Masonville. And he'd dunked me. Repeatedly. Until I'd kneed him in the groin and he'd gone down while I went up for air.

Still, I got out of the car and followed Billy. As Chief John Worthy had been all too happy to point out to Tyra, I am by nature nosy—although I prefer to think of it as curiosity-gifted. Besides, Billy and I had both survived the pool incident and made up. Surely we'd survive whatever awaited us in Rosa's neat little house.

But once I got inside Rosa's living room, my confidence dwindled. Huddled together on the couch, beneath a big plastic crucifix loosely tacked to the wall, so that Jesus stared down from his cross at the tops of their heads, were Aguila and Ramon. When I walked in the room, Ramon shrank further back into the couch, looking scared. But Aguila jumped up, arms crossed, a frown on her face, looking ready for a fight.

I didn't want a fight. In fact, given that they were on my list of suspects for murdering Lewis, I wanted to run.

“Billy,” I said, in a tone that added, “Get me out of here.”

“It's okay,” Billy said, putting his hand on my shoulder. Rosa eased past us into the room and said something in Spanish to Aguila. Aguila shook her head, but Rosa kept talking, and finally the younger woman deferred and sat back down next to Ramon, who was still staring worriedly at me.

Rosa sat down next to them. “Sit down, Josie,” she said, indicating a rocker over the back of which Rosa had draped a crocheted white afghan.

I kept standing. Rosa glared at me. I sat, rocking back a bit, then steadying myself. I did not think that this was going to be a cozy rocking-chair type conversation. Billy had pulled a kitchen chair into the room, and sat on the chair.

“Billy—” I started again.

He patted me on the shoulder, sending me rocking again. “It'll be OK,” he said.

I looked at the three people lined up on the couch across from me—Rosa, Ramon, Aguila. Older, young, younger. Calm, scared, tough. And then I gasped, seeing something else in those faces. In Aguila, I saw the young face that had once been Rosa's. The resemblance between the two women was unmistakable.

Rosa read my face. “My grandniece. But we look like grandmother and granddaughter, don't we?” An expression of pride flared for a moment, then quickly turned to sadness. “But I never had children. So no grandchildren. So I was happy when I heard from Aguila, my grandniece, child of my sister—may she rest in peace.” Rosa made the sign of the cross, while glancing in the direction of the crucifix.

“They have a child—Selena. She's only eight,” Rosa said.

Aguila said something in Spanish.

“They left her in Mexico in good care a few months ago, with Ramon's people, to come to California to work.”

“The work was in Tyra Grimes's T-shirt factory?” I asked.

Aguila said something else, more animatedly.

“Yes,” Rosa said. “She says a man came to their town—a recruiter—who told them and others that he had visas for them. They could come work, make good money, send the money home. They wrote to me about it before they left. I still have the letters. All seemed well.”

Ramon spoke next. Rosa interpreted for him, “But then they got word that their daughter, Selena, is sick back home. She has epilepsy and needs medicine to keep it under control—medicine Ramon's family back home can't afford. Ramon and Aguila wanted to leave work and go back home, but they were told no, their visas are not in order, after all, they'll be arrested if they leave the compound where they are living. But they were desperate.”

Aguila spoke again, this time trembling with anger.

“She says they stole the T-shirts and got away from that terrible work camp of Ms. Grimes's,” Rosa said. “They knew they could get a lot of money for those T-shirts, then go home and use it to get better care for Selena. They came here, because I am their only family here in this country.”

Ramon muttered something, put his head in his hands.

“Then they had bad luck, he says.”

No kidding, I thought. They come to Paradise . . . and Tyra Grimes, the very person they are trying to get away from, shows up.

“But now what? And how can I possibly help?”

Billy spoke up. “Their first plan was to get as far away as possible from here as soon as they knew Tyra Grimes had arrived in town. But we came up with a better plan.”

I was afraid to ask who “we” was.

Ramon stood up, pulled an envelope out of the hip pocket of his jeans, said something in Spanish, and leaned forward, holding the envelope toward me. His hand was trembling. He said something else—and this time I made out one word:
Paige
.

I looked at Billy. “Paige . . . where is she, what's she . . .”

“You can help by taking that envelope, Josie,” Billy said. “It contains a letter from Paige to Tyra. Obviously, she doesn't want to mail the letter. She could be tracked that way.”

“Where is Paige?” I asked.

Billy shook his head. “I can't tell you that right now.”

“You don't trust me,” I said, while thinking, oh, Billy, are you trusting the right people? The Cruezes' story was moving . . . if it was true. And I knew Paige had broken into my bedroom, lied about the mud stain . . .

“I trust you—we trust you—enough to ask you to take this letter to her.”

“I don't understand how a letter from Paige to Tyra will help these two or their daughter . . .”

“Let's just say . . . I got to know Paige out at the Red Horse. By then, I'd already met Aguila and Ramon and learned about their and Selena's situation. After going a little . . . nuts . . . with that T-shirt effigy in Paradise, I decided I should try to help these people. But I couldn't come up with anything, until I met Paige. When I found out who she was, I let her have it with what I think of her boss's labor practices.” Billy glanced at Ramon and Aguila. “She knew the allegations, of course. She was defensive at first. But when she learned more about the truth from Ramon and Aguila, and about Selena, she came up with a plan on her own that can help out Selena. Cover her medical care . . . and take care of any, ah, legal issues there might be with Ramon and Aguila going back home to their daughter.”

Aguila muttered something, crossed herself.

“She says,” Rosa said, “that America is a land of great opportunity. She still thinks so, even though their experience with Tyra Grimes was not good. She hopes that someday, she and Ramon and Selena can come back. But for now, she wants to go home to her daughter, and help her get the right medical care.”

I looked at the envelope, still in Ramon's shaking hand, still thrust at me. I could guess what Paige was telling Tyra. Paige probably had evidence—or could testify against Tyra—for her labor practices. But wouldn't, if Tyra would contribute money and pull strings to get help for Selena, Aguila, and Ramon.

I didn't take the envelope yet. “Blackmail?”

Billy crossed his arms, looked at me steadily with that new, serious, deep gaze of his. “If you want to call it that. I call it Selena's best hope. If you want to help her—help these people—all you have to do is take the envelope to Tyra. Paige's letter points out to Tyra why it's in her best interest to help this family.”

I'd come out here, wanting to find answers. Right and wrong should be easy to tell apart, shouldn't they? That's what the law is for, isn't it—making it easy to know how to act right? That's why I'd always admired Chief Hilbrink.

But at that moment, in Rosa's little house, it all seemed pretty muddled up. Blackmailing's wrong. But so is forcing people to work against their will. Stealing is wrong, and breaking immigration laws is wrong. Certainly murdering is wrong—and I couldn't be sure that Billy wasn't trusting the wrong people, something that had gotten him into trouble in the past—and that in the heat of a confrontation Tyra was hiding, the Cruezes and/or Paige hadn't been involved in Lewis's murder.

Still, it was also wrong that this couple had been taken in by false promises of good, legal work, and ended up separated from their daughter, who was now ill.

So I did the only right thing I could think of to do.

I took the envelope.

13

So that's how I ended up once again driving down a country road with a letter to Tyra Grimes in my passenger seat.

Of course, the first letter had been from me. This letter was from Paige, and she was relying on me to get it to Tyra.

Well, truth be told, lots of people were relying on me to get it to Tyra. So this time, I drove extra carefully and slowly. I surely didn't need Chief Worthy stopping me this time around, seeing the envelope on my seat—clearly labeled “To: Tyra, From: Paige”—and asking me a lot of questions.

Billy had decided to stay with Rosa, Aguila, and Ramon. So I was alone with my thoughts about this latest development and my worries about Tyra's big announcement coming up at Stillwater in just a few days, a date that hung out in the near future like a big old stain of doom.

When I got back to Paradise, all the television vans and strange cars were still clogging the streets. Tyra wasn't anywhere to be found. I went up to my apartment and carefully put the letter in my sock drawer.

Then I went back down to my laundromat and started cleaning up the mess.

Sometime that night, I heard Tyra, coming down the little hallway, singing, “
Don't cry for me, Argentina
,” in the same warbling voice she'd used to sing show tunes when she'd arrived only a few days before. Only a whole lifetime before.

I found her in the hallway as she was letting herself into Billy's old apartment and pushed the envelope at her.