Heaven to Betsy (Emily #1) (13 page)

“Slick move,” I said. I got up and followed him toward the managers’ offices.

“He’s going to bring them to us one by one, and the HR woman will sit in on the interviews. We’re to check in with her first.”

Wallace seemed to know his way around, and we ended up outside an office that said
Linda Grace
on a nameplate to the right of the door. He knocked on the wall beside it.

“Linda? CPS here for the follow-up interviews.”

Industrial-grade neutral paint covered the bare walls—and it smelled fresh. The woman behind the modular, L-shaped desk pointed to the two chairs in front of it.

“Have a seat,” she said.

Sitting in her own chair, she looked round, like a Weeble, with a very squat neck. And short like a Weeble, too. I wondered if her feet even reached the floor. She didn’t help matters by wearing a red and purple horizontally striped dress. A silver-accented frame decorated with a cross showed Linda standing with an older man (whose stringy beard gave me the icks) and two children who seemed about six years old—a boy and a girl. From their size, they looked like they must be either twins or very close in age.

“This is my colleague Emily,” Wallace said.

I smiled and said, “Nice to meet you, Linda.”

She nodded and typed something at her keyboard.

We sat. Wallace leaned to me and whispered, “She’s a real people person, puts the human in human resources.”

I stifled the laugh that tried to sneak out.

Wallace shifted in his seat and leaned forward. The voice he used dripped honey. “Linda, we just have a few short questions for you before the first witness arrives.”

Linda made a bitter beer face. “I already talked to the police.”

“Yes, but we’re trying to find Valentina, Sofia’s daughter.”

Without the facial contortions, Linda’s features looked porcine. Her skin was pale, and she had dark circles under her eyes.

“We knew her as Maria.” Linda said. She tilted her head as she studied me. “Say, don’t I know you?”

I struggled to place her face. “I’m not sure. I grew up here. Went to Amarillo High. Graduated twelve years ago.”

She crossed her arms. Her bosom created such a protrusion that it looked like she was dancing an Irish jig. “Yes, we’re the same age,” she said. “I went to Tascosa. I heard you just moved back to town.”

This wasn’t going anywhere good. “Yes, I did.”

Her piggy eyes squinted, and, for the first time, she smiled. “You’re the one whose husband—”

I broke in. “So about Maria.” I felt Wallace’s eyes boring into me, but I ignored him. “As we try to help her daughter, anything we can learn about her as a mother and who she associated with is incredibly helpful. We’re trying to figure out how Sofia found the Maria Delgado identity. It’s possible that whoever helped her get it has Valentina. Or maybe she wrote something on her application that would lead us to Valentina. I was hoping you’d let us look at her employee file, or, even better, give us a copy.”

Pink spread across Linda’s face. “Those are confidential employee documents.”

“Of course,” I said.

I licked my lips. Linda would feel defensive about being tricked by an applicant. She had to report new hires to the INS, and the hotel could get in a load of trouble if she’d half-assed the hiring process. I tried to sound empathetic.

“It must be very frustrating that she submitted fraudulent papers,” I said. “But Sofia isn’t still your employee, is she? If you’d like, we could get a waiver from her. It’s just hard, since she’s in prison, and it might take us a week.” I pointed at her framed picture. “Meanwhile, there’s a little girl, just about your daughter’s age in that picture, missing. I can only imagine how frightened she must be. I hope Valentina can make it a week. I hope she’s not being molested or tortured, that she has food—”

Linda held up her hand. “Stop. I know she’s missing, but the police already have the documents.”

Wallace broke in. “Nobody wants to find her more than CPS, not even the city police, and we’re a
state
agency. Your cooperation would be much appreciated, and I wouldn’t ask if we didn’t believe it was the Christian thing to do, ma’am.”

I wanted to applaud. Wallace might not be from around here, but he’d figured out how to work within the system. I gave him a silent
woot
.

Linda lumbered to her feet. She pushed her chair back with her body and headed for the door. As she walked, the heavy brush of her thighs against each other made a grating pantyhose sound. Wallace and I looked at each other and I slapped my hand over my mouth. He licked his index finger and tapped it in the air as if touching it to a hot stove. God would smite us for sure now. Wallace had used the Lord’s name to pressure a witness, and then we’d been uncharitable toward the woman helping us. Her attitude sure made it hard to be nice, though. I resolved to try harder anyway.

Linda returned, panting. She handed me a stack of papers, without a word.

I thumbed through them. An application, the results of a background check, some new hire paperwork, and copies of Maria Delgado’s Social Security card and green card.

“Thank you very much,” I said.

Linda grunted.

Wallace perused the documents as I did, and I pointed to the list of references on her application, then at the emergency contact in her new hire papers. My hands felt tingly with excitement. Leads.

A stiff, male voice behind us interrupted my thoughts. “If you and your colleague would be so kind as to join us, Mr. Gray, I have arranged for the coworkers of the woman we knew as Ms. Delgado to take turns speaking to you. You, too, Linda.”

By the time I’d hefted my handbag and turned around, all I saw was the retreating backside of an African American man. I moved quickly with Wallace behind me and Linda trailing us. The man stopped at a doorway and turned. He had incredibly good posture—God, how my pageant coach would have loved him—and hazel eyes that were almost green. He wore a white dress shirt with the Wyndham logo on the collar and a name badge above it that read Russell Grant.

“Thank you, sir.”

Wallace echoed me. “Thank you, Mr. Grant.”

We entered to find a white woman waiting for us in a room identical to Linda’s office except that it held a round, faux cherry table with four chairs instead of a modular desk. There was nothing on the walls in there, either. Maybe the hotel just hadn’t rehung the decorations yet after painting.

Wallace and I both greeted the woman and took our seats. Without lifting her eyes from the table, she mumbled a reply in the voice of a three-pack-a-day smoker. She wore a burgundy service dress and had mostly gray hair and a stocky frame. Linda joined us a minute later, moving in a side-to-side rocking motion and breathing harder than before. She was definitely on a path to cut to the front of the line on the heart transplant list.

The manager stepped inside. “You’ll be speaking to Cindy here first,” he said. “Then I’ll bring Aracelli in fifteen minutes, and you’ll finish up with Roberto in another fifteen. They’re the only ones available.”

He left, closing the door behind him.

The meeting with Cindy yielded nothing. She kept her eyes on the table and spoke in a detached voice. She knew “Maria” only at work, they didn’t talk, she’d never seen her daughter, and she didn’t know anyone who was friendly with her. Aracelli had nothing for us either, but her voice strained and cracked when she spoke—once I thought I even saw tears. But, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get her to talk about Sofia.

Roberto was a different story.

The slight man wore a male version of the same burgundy service clothes the women wore. He looked into my eyes as he talked, and his tone was urgent.

“I work in the big rooms, the ballrooms, and I fix little things in the guest rooms,” he said. “Leaky sinks. Shower curtain rods. Things like that.” He looked straight at Linda. “I been here six months, I work hard.” He turned back to us. “Maria work hard, too. She very serious about work and about her daughter. Two times she bring a little girl here and hide her while she work.” He looked down. “I sorry I no tell you, Mrs. Linda.”

I kicked Wallace under the table. This contradicted what Roberto’s coworkers had told both of us, so far, about Sofia.

Before Linda could speak, I asked him, “Valentina?”

“Yes, she call her Valentina. The girl pretty, like her mama. She don’t talk. She just sleep and color pictures. She color pictures for me.”

“Where did Valentina sleep and color pictures?”

“She little, and she ride on her mama’s cart, hide behind the curtain.”

“Did she ever go into the rooms?”

“Yes, I see her once.”

Linda sniffed. “We can talk about this later, Roberto.”

His voice came out very soft. “Yes, Mrs. Linda.”

I wanted to whack Linda for casting a pall on our conversation, but I forged ahead.

“Roberto, this is very helpful. Just a few more questions. Did Sofia—Maria—tell you about any friends?”

“No one.”

“Anybody Valentina stayed with?”

“No.”

“A man, her husband, or Valentina’s father, perhaps?”

“Never.”

“Nothing about bad men, or men wanting to hurt or take her or Valentina?”

“No, Miss.” Roberto’s shoulders heaved and he put his face in both hands and rubbed it. When he looked back up and dropped his hands, he shook his head. “I wish she did. I wish I could help that little girl.”

I started to thank him, but he sat up straight again and said, “Wait. You ask about bad men, and I saw a man that might do something maybe bad. He have a bald head, shaved”—he rubbed his scalp—“and he run out of the hotel that night. The night Maria, I mean Sofia, shoot that other man.” He raised his hands palms up. “I think, why he in a hurry? But then I forget and never see him again.”

I wanted to pound the table and shout, “Yes!” But I settled with asking him follow-ups. “Was he white?”

“Yes?”

“How old?”

“Not so young, not so old.”

“Did he have anyone with him?”

“I don’t think so.” He shook his head. “No.”

“Did you see where he went, or if he left in a vehicle?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Sorry.”

I reached across the table and patted his hand. “Don’t be sorry. This is great. Thank you, Roberto. Thank you.”

“Is that all?”

“It is. Adios.”

“Adios.” He rose to leave and Linda went with him.

Valentina had been here, and Spike might have seen her. Remembering Spike’s past and his connection to his old partner in crime—Harvey—here in Amarillo, it wasn’t out of the question that Harvey had been here, too. If Harvey and Spike were together, they could have been up to their old tricks with Valentina. Sofia might have caught them in the act, and, as a mother, she would have had to stop them. They might be the “bad men” she told Jack and me about. Heck, Harvey might even be the guy Roberto had seen running from the hotel. His description fit. Too late, I realized I should have shown the picture of Harvey to Roberto.

It was possible. It was more than possible. I whispered a prayer that I was wrong, that a convicted child molester did not have Valentina, then turned to Wallace.

“I think I know where to find her. And we need to hurry.”

Wallace punched it through the yellow light on the access road at Georgia Street.

“So you think this Harvey and Spike molested Valentina, and Harvey has her?” he said.

“Maybe,” I said, “and it’s terrifying.”

“I need to call it in.”

I ignored his comment, and he kept driving. Harvey’s address was in the file I’d brought with me, and I entered it into the Maps app on my phone. He lived southeast of downtown, in the home he’d inherited from his mother before he’d done time. Siri called out the directions in her mezzo staccato voice: “Continue on Interstate 40 for 3.4 miles.”

Wallace had the Altima up to ninety-five miles per hour. He whipped around slower traffic like Jeff Gordon as he continued to accelerate. Siri had us exit at Ross-Osage, and Wallace took the corner with wheels screeching. He made another hard right on Twenty-seventh.

“We’re almost there,” he said.

We came to an intersection. One of Stanley Marsh’s many fake traffic signs throughout the city was planted in the yard of the house on the corner. This one read Undead End. Cryptic Texas kitsch, but this time it was eerie as well. We made our last left at the corner onto Olive Street and Wallace slowed down.

“It’s up on the right, nearly to the end of the block.” Wallace pointed. The street dead-ended a few hundred feet after Harvey’s house.

“What is that, where the street ends? It looks like . . .”

“Llano Cemetery.”

It was creepy—made creepier by the undead sign. Not that I believed in the undead; live people were way scarier than zombies anyway. Wallace executed a perfect U-turn again and parked facing Twenty-seventh across from the gloomy gray house belonging to Harvey. There were no other cars in front of it. It looked better than Maria Delgado’s, but that wasn’t saying much. It had a front sidewalk and a shuttered window left of the front door. A garage jutted off of the right front of the house in an L—an obvious afterthought added by someone with little or no construction skills. The yard was even worse than Delgado’s, though, and the paint was cracked and peeling on the garage and window frames. Missing shingles on the roof formed a crazy quilt pattern.

I opened the car door and jumped out. My heart hammered harder than it had the time Jib had stumbled at full gallop and I’d watched, helpless, as the ground came at me in slow motion. Jib had rolled over me, but we’d both come out of it okay. I said a little prayer for Valentina, for Wallace, and for me—that we all would be okay now, too.

I spoke into the car: “Wallace, we need a plan.”

“Yeah, here’s a plan,” he said. “We call my office and the cops. By the book.”

“I can’t stand the thought of leaving her in there another second,” I said.

I pulled my hair off my face and behind my head in one hand. The wind had picked up quite a bit in the last two hours.

“If she’s in there,” Wallace said.

“And if she’s not, we look like idiots for running off to the police and accusing this guy half-cocked,” I said.

“There is that.”

I made a decision. “I’m going in,” I said.

“You’re going to get me arrested,” Wallace replied.

“Nah, it will be fine.”

“I hope this means you thought of something.”

It didn’t. I refrained from saying so.

He climbed out and locked his car. “Fine,” he said. “But I have 911 punched into my phone, and I’m dialing if we see any sign of her.”

I ran to the front garage and peeked in through one of the dirty windows. No vehicles, but a tire sat in the middle of the floor beside a large oil stain. A rake and shovel hung on the wall.

“Come on.” I motioned for Wallace to follow me around back.

“Don’t you want to start with the doorbell?” he asked in a hiss louder than his speaking voice.

I ignored him. Moving quickly, I opened the side gate to the back yard and slipped through. The first window we came to had battered shades covering it from the inside. The next window was high, small, and opaque. I moved on and peered in the last side window. No lights. No people. A mattress on the floor. A bedroom?

I ran into the deserted, treeless back yard. It made the front look pampered. Someone had burned a pile of garbage on the concrete patio, leaving behind a can of Wolf Brand Chili with a half-burned label and a pile of ash. The wind sifted the ash and scattered some in our direction.

The window on the near side of the back door had a black trash bag over a missing pane with duct tape that was starting to lose its adhesive at the edges. This window looked in on the other side of the same empty bedroom I’d just seen.

On the opposite side of the back door, we found the window to the kitchen. Again, no people. A large cardboard box sat upturned in the tiny eating area. A rat was scavenging on a plate and fork sitting on the box. The sink below the window had another garbage bag in it, and roaches scurried in and out. The refrigerator door hung open.

I tried the back door and, to my surprise and horror, the handle turned. I pushed the door inward as softly as I could, and it swung open. I arrested its progress before it hit the cabinets inside and leaned in after it.

Wallace stumbled backward. “Oh no. No no no. No trespassing.”

“But it’s open,” I said.

“It’s still trespassing. I could get fired.”

Would Jack fire me if I got arrested for trespassing? Probably not. And if he did, wasn’t my job with him temporary anyway? I felt an odd pang in my chest at the thought, but I refused to consider what it meant. I didn’t have time to get sappy. I lifted my chin and stepped over the threshold.

“Oh shit, Emily. Come on now, don’t go in there.”

“I’ll be right back. You just keep a lookout.”

I tiptoed into the kitchen. If Valentina was in here, she was leaving with me.

***

The stench in the house hit me with the force of a one-ton bull. Rotting garbage. Urine and feces. The rat looked up at me from its perch on the box, its front paws to its face, its tiny jaws working on its prize. The roaches ignored me. I pulled out my phone and activated a low-beam flashlight app, forcing myself to walk through the kitchen and the dark doorway beyond it.

The kitchen emptied into a den that had access to the front door. There was a bedroll on the carpet—carpet that crunched under my feet. Beside the bedroll was a backpack in a bluish color, flat and empty. A pair of men’s tube socks partially inside out, bunched up in sweaty, dirt-caked folds hung from the backpack’s open zipper. No people in here, at least not now. Because there obviously
was
a person living here—a gross person who preferred life in the dark away from prying eyes.

Another doorway on the far side of the room beckoned, darker than the one from the kitchen. Sweat trickled down my back and I stood frozen in place. Someone had to do this. Someone had to care about this little girl enough to do this; the only someone here was me. I crept across the living room. My mouth and eyes watered, and something large pushed my heartbeat up into the base of my throat, nearly gagging me. I stopped, swallowing over and over until the nausea passed and I could slink forward again.

The doorway entered a short hall with a bathroom in the middle and doorways to my right and left. I knew there was a bedroom to the left—I’d seen it through the window. It had looked empty, but what about the closets? Or what if the person living here had fled to this bedroom after I’d peeked in earlier? I couldn’t skip it. I had to be thorough. So I stepped into the tiny room—it was empty, thank God—passed the mattress, and faced the closet. Its door was ajar. It was empty, too. I hadn’t known I was holding my breath until I realized I was lightheaded; I exhaled in a gush, trying desperately to quiet my breath.

A text chimed. I froze. If someone was in here, they now knew for sure that I was, too. It could be Wallace warning me of something, so I glanced at it.

Rich:
When can we finish our talk?

Sheesh. Ex-husband. If I ended up dead because that text alerted the boogie man, it would be his fault. It figured that he’d continue to mess things up for me. But no boogie man jumped out. I stayed motionless for several seconds, then moved on.

The bathroom was next. I poked my head out the bedroom door. The hall was still empty. Belatedly, it occurred to me that a weapon would have been a smart idea. I’d left my handbag in the car, though, so if I came upon someone who wasn’t glad to see me, I’d get to practice my rusty self-defense skills. I rolled my neck, and it cracked. Thanks to years of goat tying and classes at the YMCA in Dallas, I’d learned that my strength was in getting an attacker flipped and on the ground. Then I could drive my palm up through the bridge of his nose or jab my fingers in his eyes. If I had to. I shuddered, swallowing down more nausea. For the first time since I’d entered the house, I remembered that I was pregnant. A pregnant woman had no business in here. But then, neither did Valentina.

I made my way silently into the bathroom. It was peppered with little spotlights from where the crushed blinds gapped. Dark stains streaked the sink and curtainless tub. The laminate had detached from the countertop and broken away in patches. But there was nothing and no one in the room.

Again, I leaned out slowly to check the hall before entering it. All clear. On to the last room. Its door was three-quarters of the way shut. I didn’t like that at all. I held my phone’s flashlight in my left hand and pushed the door back until it met the wall with a thud. No doorstop. No sound in the room. A sharp pain ripped through my abdomen and I dropped to my knees in shock, a strangled cry escaping my lips before I could hold it in. My phone bounced once helplessly on the carpet, landing flashlight down.

“Emily!” Wallace’s voice echoed through the silent house, and his footsteps followed it. In seconds he was on the ground behind me, his hands on my shoulders. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“I think . . . yeah, I’m fine. I don’t know what happened. A cramp or something.”

This baby seemed to want me to always know it was there. I didn’t think this cramp was normal, though. When we finished today, I’d make a “first available” obstetrician appointment. I’d vomited up my news in New Mexico yesterday and lived through it. I’d survive the onslaught of Amarillo gossip that my condition would unleash, too.

Wallace slipped his arm under my shoulder and around my back. He hefted me up, grunting at first until I helped him.

“I’m sorry to scare you,” I said. “Really, I’m fine. Thank you.”

“I thought you’d been stabbed or something,” he said.

It had felt like it. “Yeah, I overreacted.” I took several deep breaths and waited for the pain. None came. “Just one more room and we’re done.”

Having Wallace with me gave me courage. I stepped into the room, avoiding another mattress and a pile of crap (literal crap, the origins of which I didn’t want to consider) and faced the closed closet door. I yanked it open, and screamed my fool head off.

I wasn’t the only one. The two teenagers huddled in the closet joined in with me. I backpedaled and fell onto the mattress. Wallace, who had remained in the doorway, leapt into the room, arms raised in a judo posture, knees flexed, on his toes.

The screaming stopped.

“Don’t hurt us,” one of the teenagers said in a high-pitched voice.

The other added in a slightly deeper one, “I know we’re not supposed to be here. We’ll move out, I swear.”

“What in hell? How old are you?” Wallace reached a hand out and pulled me to my feet. “Emily, give me some light.”

I pointed my phone at their torsos so as not to blind them. They were filthy. Two gangly waifs in blue jeans and sweatshirts, ridiculous, dark knit caps on their heads. Girls? I looked closer. One a girl, one a boy. The girl had one green eye and one brown eye, and the boy had a nasty scar on his neck—long since healed, but brutal looking.

The boy spoke. “Eighteen.”

Wallace put his hands on his hips. “Don’t try to bullshit me.”

They looked at each other, and the girl whimpered softly.

The boy repeated, “Eighteen. So you can’t call our parents.”

Wallace shook his head. “Show me some ID.”

The boy stood up and helped the girl stand, too. “We don’t have to show you nothing. You’re not the cops.”

Wallace pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to an ID, which he pointed at them. “Better. Child Protective Services.”

I put my hand on his arm. He looked at me, and I mouthed, “My turn, please?”

He swept his hand at me and gave a slight bow.

I turned to the kids. “We’re looking for a man named Harvey Dulles. This is his house. Have you seen him?”

Two head shakes. Still, it was the boy who answered. “The skinhead that lived here left last week.”

Last week? That was around the time Sofia killed Spike. “How do you know?”

The girl piped in. “Because we’ve been camping out in the cemetery for a while now, and we watch the neighborhood. He packed up his truck like he wasn’t coming back. We waited a few days, and when nobody came, we moved in.” She looked down. “It was starting to get cold at night.”

“Have you seen a little Hispanic girl, about six years old?”

They both shook their heads. I wrestled with the information. So Harvey had moved out. Why would he abandon a home he owned free and clear? That was suspicious behavior. Irrational and suspicious. I wanted to cry, to flail, to scream. I didn’t.

I turned to Wallace. “All yours.”

His voice softened. “Here’s the deal. I can’t pretend I don’t see two kids who are fifteen at the oldest standing in front of me without enough to eat, not going to school, and with no one to keep them safe. I promise I’m going to help you guys, but you’re going to have to come with us.”

The boy bristled. “Yeah, like CPS ever helped us before? That’s why we’re here. We got stuck in a house where we were raped and beaten. We made a run for it. Bet CPS doesn’t even know we’re gone and those foster assholes are still cashing the checks.”

Wallace swallowed hard; I heard his throat catch. “It’s not supposed to be like that. If I’d known that was happening, I’d have taken you away from them and turned them over to the cops. Which is what I’m going to do now.” He pointed at the door. “Let’s go.”