Fool's Puzzle (15 page)

“Look,” he said, his voice going into the dry-ice stage. “I want you out of my sight. I’m so angry at you right now, I don’t know what I’ll do. I suggest you stop arguing with me while I’m still rational.”

“Fine. But do you plan on showing up at six tomorrow morning to set up for the festival?”

“I’ll drop the keys off in your mailbox when we’re done.”

“You don’t know where I live.”

He looked at me with disdain.

“Right,” I mumbled. I took the keys to the museum off my key ring and threw them on the counter.

I picked up my quilt and walked out, acutely aware of his frigid stare and the embarrassed looks of the officers working on the scene.

Grabbing the Levi jacket lying across the front seat of the truck, I slipped it on, not gaining much comfort from the cold, damp cotton. The image of Eric’s body flashed through my mind, and the implication of it was so overwhelming, I didn’t know what to do. When I reached my rented house and pulled into the driveway, a sudden feeling of alienation and fear struck me and I wanted to be someplace familiar, someplace from the past. It was too late to drive out to the ranch, so I threw the truck in reverse and drove downtown to a place guaranteed to be both familiar and open.

A STRAWBERRY MALT on a cold November morning is not physically soothing no matter what personal history is attached to it.

Liddie’s Cafe was almost empty since most students had left for the holiday and the two A.M. bar rush was still an hour away. My waitress, a young brunette with a bottle-brush hairdo and long pumpkin-colored nails, didn’t blink twice when I ordered two large strawberry malts. Working this shift, she’d probably seen stranger.

Pulling my Levi jacket close around me, I stretched my legs lengthwise across the red vinyl bench seat and rested the back of my head against the icy window. I closed my eyes and wondered if anyone would care if I stayed there forever. My waitress checked back once. Twice. Then left me alone. I drifted in and out of that lazy dreaminess overly warm rooms and indistinct conversations bring on. The voices swelled around me, becoming louder, more animated as the bars closed and people continued their partying over breakfast.

“I thought I told you to go home.” Keys clattered across the table.

I took my time opening my eyes. Ortiz stood at the end of the booth, hands in his pockets, tie pulled loose and crooked, deep shadows under squinting blue eyes that seemed naked and vulnerable without his glasses. The dark stubble sprouting along his jaw line gave his face a faintly criminal cast.

“Contrary to what you’d prefer,” I said, “this city is not under martial law and I am old enough to be out after curfew.” I grabbed the museum’s keys and stuck them in my pocket.

“It’s dangerous for a woman to be out alone this time of night.”

“This isn’t L.A., and even if it was, where I go and when really isn’t any business of yours.”

“Robbery, assault and rape exist even here and, unfortunately, that is my business,” he said, his jaw setting stubbornly.

“Get lost,” I replied.

“Look, I realize I overreacted. I’m sorry. But what did you expect? I go up and there’s this body—”

“Which I keep telling you I knew nothing about, and sorry doesn’t begin to cover it. You’ve acted like some kind of Nazi general from the beginning of this whole thing.”

“And you’ve interfered from the beginning. Withholding information, witnesses, evidence—”

“Look, in the last four days you have lectured me four times. I don’t want or need another one. I am sick of—”

“Good.” He slid into the seat across from me. “So am I.”

“Hit the road, Sergeant Friday. This isn’t a television show. I don’t have to talk to you.”

My spike-haired waitress walked up, a pleased smile curving her pale tangerine lips.

“So your guy finally made it,” she said. “You all done there?” She gestured at my empty glass.

“Take both of them.” I shoved the untouched strawberry malt toward her. “And no, my guy didn’t make it. He died nine months ago.” I looked at Ortiz. “But then you already know that. You know everything, right?”

Her eyes darted to Ortiz, who shook his head slightly, then back at me. She pursed her lips, picked up the glasses.

“Anything for you, sir?”

“Coffee.” He settled in, stretching his arm across the back of the seat, loosening his tie more. “Look, I said I was sorry. What more can I do? And my name is Gabriel. Gabe.”

I leaned my head back against the window and closed my eyes, hoping if I ignored him, he’d go away. Minutes passed. The swish-swish of the waitress’s nylons, the clink of cup against saucer, the acidic scent of strong coffee told me he wasn’t leaving. Inhaling the steam of his coffee, I imagined how it might warm the lump behind my breastbone, a lump as hard and cold as a hailstone.

“I am sorry,” he said, softer this time. “About tonight. About your husband. I didn’t know until a little while ago how he died. Officer Aragon told me. It must be tough.”

The image of Eric’s body, lack of sleep, the unexpected kindness in his voice, or maybe a combination of all three, caused moist heat to burn in the back of my eyes. Tears formed in the corners but I held back, my throat aching with the effort. I had to do something—scream, curse, throw his coffee mug across the room, run out. But they all seemed to take so much effort. So I kept my eyes closed and talked.

“Jack loved strawberry malts. One time, when we were sixteen, he drank four in a row. His father had grounded him for cutting algebra, so we hitchhiked into town and sat here until two in the morning until Wade found us and took us home.”

I opened my eyes and stared straight ahead at the shiny Elvis clock behind the cash register; the minute hand circled his thick body, just as he’d sometimes swung his arm at the end of a song.

“The night he died, I was at my dad’s ranch, making strawberry preserves. I think about that a lot. Jack’s dead and all those jars of strawberry preserves are still there in my grandmother’s pantry waiting to be eaten.”

I turned and looked at Ortiz. Under the gold cast of the coffee shop lights, his dark face was still, impenetrable. I had grown up with that look—Elvia’s brothers, her father, the smooth-cheeked Spanish boys in high school in tightly pressed chinos. It could mean as little as a sore tooth or as much as a knife in your belly. His blue Anglo eyes never left my face.

“There were so many strawberries,” I said. “Two bushels. They were starting to go bad and my grandmother hates waste, so I hulled every last one of them. My hands looked like they were dipped in red ink.” I stared down at my fingers, seeing the red again.

“Do you ever wonder why things happen the way they do? I never asked Dove who gave her those strawberries but I’ve tried to imagine what would have happened if they’d never been planted, or someone forgot to water them, or a disease killed them before they could bear fruit or that person just, on the spur of the moment, gave the strawberries to someone else. I would have been home. He wouldn’t have gone to town.”

“You don’t know that,” Ortiz said. He traced his finger around the rim of his cup. If it had been crystal, a fine note might have rung.

“Yes, I do.” I swung my legs around and faced him.

“It didn’t have anything to do with you. It was his choice. A reckless choice, as Frost might say, but still, his choice.”

I clenched my fist, wanting to hit something, someone. “Every drink he had that night involved me. When he stepped into that jeep, I stepped in, too.”

“It’s not that simple,” he said.

“You’re wrong. It’s just that simple. When he left me, he took everything I had.” I stared at my clenched fist, then looked up. “Tell me, do you have children?”

He looked back with surprise. “Yes. A son.”

“Then you couldn’t know.”

“Know what?”

“That it’s different. When you’re married and don’t have children, everything you have is wrapped up in one person. When they aren’t there anymore, it’s like ...” I stopped. What was it like? What could I say? That it was harder and harder each day to remember Jack? That at some point the unthinkable happens, when you least expect it; you realize you’ve stopped loving the person and started loving the memory, the memory only you have, and you’re afraid if you forget or you die, it would be like the two of you never existed.

“What?” he asked after a few minutes.

I looked at him and thought, I can’t bear this.

“I knew him before he could shave,” I said.

He was wise enough to realize there was nothing he could say.

The noisy background chatter slowly leaked away like the air in a helium balloon as group after group of customers paid for their breakfasts and left. I suddenly felt that if I could get to my bed, I could sleep for days. I laid my head on the table, cradling it in my arms, not caring how it looked.

I felt or thought I felt, through the thick cotton of my jacket, a pressure on my arm. I looked up. His hands were wrapped around his mug. His eyes seemed full of pain. Or maybe it was just fatigue.

“You’re tired,” he said. “You need to go home.”

Suddenly, talking about Jack to Ortiz, telling a stranger things I’d never told anyone, sickened me. It made me feel disloyal and angry—at Ortiz, at myself.

“Do you think the same person killed Marla and Eric?” I said abruptly.

“I don’t want to talk about that right now,” he replied in a weary voice. “Especially with you.”

“Did you find the money?”

He raked his fingers impatiently through neat black hair. “There wasn’t any money.”

“There was,” I insisted. “It was a big plastic bag full of money.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure. What kind of question is that?”

“Look, if your cousin calls, you can tell her she doesn’t have to worry about Eric Griffin anymore.”

“Was she in any danger?”

“Apparently not from him. But someone else?” He shrugged, drained the last of his coffee, studying the bottom of his cup as if the answer would appear in the dregs.

“So all we have to do is find out what Eric and Marla had in common.”

Annoyance flashed across his face. “I will. You won’t. I’ve had about all I can take of you being involved in this. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in four days. I don’t want to have to worry about you on top of everything else.” He slapped the cup down in the saucer. The sharp clink caused me to wince. “Come on, I’ll walk you out.”

“Who asked you to worry about me? And I’m perfectly capable of walking myself out.”

“I’m doing it for me, not you. How would it look if a citizen was mugged while the chief of police sipped coffee a hundred feet away?”

“You’re absolutely right. It would look terrible. Are you going to stay and walk everyone out?” I gestured around the restaurant at the other customers. “You could be here all night.”

“For once, could you just not argue with me?”

I started to protest, but the exhausted look on his face stopped me. Though it irritated me, a surge of pity welled up. It couldn’t be easy having to deal with the stress of two murders in a place where you have no family or friends.

“Oh, all right,” I said, reaching for the check. He snatched it up first and slid out of the booth.

“I’ll get it.” His face dared me to protest.

I picked up my purse, too tired to argue. We didn’t speak as we walked out to the parking lot. Freezing night air turned our breath to floating white powder. The sky was clear, moonless, black. The old mercury vapor street lights illuminated everything with a blue, spooky cast that caused an involuntary shudder to run up my spine.

“Cold?” Ortiz asked.

I pulled my denim jacket closer, wishing it was my sheepskin. “Just a goose walking over my grave.”

He laughed out loud, startling a nervous cat crouched underneath my truck. “My grandfather used to say that.”

“Your Kansas one?”

He gave an ironic smile. “So you found me out.”

“Derby, Kansas.” I shook my head. “Who would have ever guessed?”

“Well, I spent my last two years of high school in California, and I have lived there over twenty years. I assimilate easily.”

“A real asset in undercover work, I bet.”

His laugh was a low growl that, simply because it was masculine, sounded comforting. “What have you been doing, reading my personnel file?”

I lowered my chin and smiled into my jacket. “All information ends up somewhere. You said so yourself.”

“There’s nothing more disconcerting than having your own words thrown back at you. Those records are suppose to be confidential. Even I have to fill out a form in triplicate to obtain one. How did you manage?”

I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jacket and kept quiet.

“You know someone in Personnel.” He tilted his head to see my face better. “You probably went to school together. It shouldn’t be too difficult for me to find out. Breaching confidentiality in that job is probably grounds for dismissal.”

A small surge of panic for Angie flashed through me. “Look, I’m sorry. My friend shouldn’t have to pay for what I did. Please don’t make trouble for her.”

His eyes crinkled with amusement. “Humility. Now there’s a quality I’ve never seen in you before. I could get used to it.”

“Oh, shut up.” I laughed and made a fist, punching him lightly on the chest the way I did Jack when he teased me.

He grabbed it, covered it with his large hand, and shook it gently, his eyes cloudy and serious.

“Albenia Harper, you are driving me nuts. Why do you think that is?”

“Gabriel Ortiz.” I pulled my fist away and poked him in the chest with my finger. “You’re the one writing a master’s thesis on Kierkegaard. Why is anything the way it is?”

A small groan rumbled in the back of his throat. Before I realized what was happening, he slipped his hand behind my head, his fingers tangling in my hair, and pulled me to him. His embrace was powerful and his kiss intense, searching; it tasted of coffee and peppermint and salt.