Heaven to Betsy (Emily #1) (15 page)

Victoria nodded, eyes steady and wide.

“Had you ever met the man she shot—Spike Howard?”

She shook her head no.

I grabbed the file and retrieved a picture of Spike. “But you’ve seen his picture in the paper and know who I’m talking about, right? This man?”

She nodded. “I never see him before.”

“Did you see any other men around Sofia’s place?”

“No.”

I pulled out the picture I’d printed of Harvey. “How about him?”

She shook her head.

“Have you known Sofia long?”

She put her hands on either side of the seat of her chair, and slid them under her thighs. “Since she move in. One month, maybe two.”

“How do you know her?”

“Her daughter play with mine.”

“Ah, so you know Valentina.”

The girls giggled again, and Victoria shushed them. “
Si
, yes.”

“Sofia is very worried about her. Have you seen Valentina since Sofia was arrested?”

Victoria’s eyes shot over to the girls, then upwards, then down at her feet. “No.”

“Do you ever babysit her, keep her when Sofia is at work?”

Victoria moved her hands and squeezed them between her knees. “No.”

“Never? Not even when she goes to the grocery store?”

She studied the tabletop in front of her. “No.
Nunca
.”

Never. “Okay.” I thought for a moment. “What about Maria Delgado?”

Victoria moved her head back and forth in tiny shakes. “I don’t know her.”

I leaned closer to whisper, “Did Sofia ever talk about where she came from or—”

“No.” Victoria sat up in her chair, leaning against the backrest ramrod straight.

I continued: “Her husband—”

“No.” She rocked back and forth just a little.

“Or why they came? Maybe some bad men?”

“No.” She wrapped her arms around herself and continued the rocking.

“No?”

“
Nada
,” she whispered, still rocking.

Nothing. Which is what she had told me. Nothing. She was lying. I was sure of it. But why? What was she scared of? I needed time to think. I rummaged through the papers in my Redrope to buy myself time. An idea came to me, and I looked at the black-haired little girls again. All three had a high single ponytail and wore pink Barbie pj’s. One appeared to be about five years old, and the others were maybe seven and eight. Close to Valentina’s age.

“You were friends with Valentina, right?” I asked them.

Victoria jumped up, knocking into the table as she shushed the girls. “I answer your questions,” she said. “You go now.”

I nodded, and slowly put the pictures of Spike and Harvey back in my file.

I walked to the door, Victoria on my heels.

“Thank you, Victoria.”

She was already closing the door behind me as I crossed its threshold. I heard her engage the doorknob lock and slide the security chain until it dropped into position with a tiny but final plink.

Five minutes later, Wallace and I walked to the manager’s office, comparing notes along the way. He hadn’t been able to get anyone to open the door. I hadn’t been able to get a straight answer out of Victoria. Together, we added up to a goose egg on our efforts.

“At least we figured out who the woman with the incredibly bad phone manners was,” Wallace pointed out.

“It’s the little things,” I agreed. But even I realized that my voice sounded flat.

Wallace put his hand on my shoulder. “You know, most of the time the people here illegally are too scared to talk. If they get involved, they could be discovered, and that could lead to deportation. So don’t feel bad that Victoria didn’t open up to you. Remember, you got her to open that door, so now we know who she is. That really
is
something.”

Wallace knocked on the door of the manager’s unit, 8A. The door flew open and an emaciated white man wearing a wife-beater T-shirt stepped out, an army tattoo on his left arm and a challenging look on his face. His B.O. backed me up two steps, and I put a fist under my nose.

He trained his flashing eyes on Wallace. “You again.”

Wallace cleared his throat. “This is Emily Bernal from the law firm representing Sofia—”

The man turned on me, blasting me with halitosis. “I already talked to you on the phone, lady.”

He fished a pack of Camels and a lighter with a suggestive female silhouette on it from the rear pocket of his jeans.

Hello to you, too, Mr. Michael Q. Scott
, I thought.

“I was hoping you might be able to tell me if you’d ever seen either of these men.” I pulled out the photos of Spike and Harvey and splayed them in one hand in front of him.

Very deliberately, Scott picked a cigarette out of the pack, shoved it between his lips, returned the pack to his back pocket, clicked his lighter until it flamed, lit his cigarette, and puffed three times. He didn’t so much as glance at the photos. “Nope.”

My blood started simmering. “I assume that means no you
won’t
since you didn’t look. However, I am asking you, as nicely as I can, to just look at these photos one time. Have you ever seen either of these men?”

He sucked his cig and then blew out smoke. He shifted his eyes to the pictures and stuck the lighter in his pocket. “Yeah.”

“Both of them?”

“Nah. I seen the dead one on the news. Never seen the other guy.”

The simmer in my blood sped up. “Mr. Scott, Sofia is very worried about her daughter. Have you seen her anywhere?”

“God, lady, I already told you. I didn’t even know she had a daughter.”

I felt pressure building under the lid of my simmering pot. “Funny. Her next-door neighbor, Victoria, did. She said her three daughters used to play with Valentina.”

He snorted. “You’re lying.”

I came to a full, rolling boil. “I most certainly am not.”

“You want to know how I know you’re lying?” He pointed his cigarette at me, and I fantasized briefly about smashing it back into his face. He continued: “Because Victoria Nunez in 1B only has two kids. She brings ’em with her everywhere.”

I stood motionless. If she only had two daughters, why had she told me all three girls were hers?

But before I’d even finished the thought a woman’s unearthly screams rent the air from the interior of the complex.

I turned and sprinted back to Victoria’s apartment.

***

Cramps ripped through my abdomen as I rounded the last corner, panting and grimacing. I ignored the pain. Victoria and two of the little girls stood huddled and screaming outside their apartment. Victoria clutched the cloth doll I’d last seen in the arms of the smallest of the three girls. She wasn’t there with them now.

I reached Victoria and leaned on my knees. Between ragged breaths I asked, “What is it? Are you okay?”

Victoria shook her head and her screams turned to sobs. “He took her. A bad man took her.”

“Took who?”

“V-V-V-Valentina!”

Now I screamed. “No!”

I looked at the doll with new eyes and realized what a fool I’d been. The doll had a blue shirt with a lace shawl, just as Sofia had told me—a doll to match the lyrics of her daughter’s favorite song.

Wallace arrived seconds after me. He grabbed Victoria by both arms. His voice was preternaturally calm. “Who took her, Victoria?”

“
No lo sé. Algún hombre la tomó de esa manera
.” She pointed through the building.

Wallace opened his mouth, then looked at me.

I translated. “She said, ‘I don’t know. Some man took her that way.’ To the street.”

I took off again, toward the street we’d parked on. Wallace’s Altima stuck out from the clunkers lining the curb, but no cars were moving and there were no empty spaces. I ran to the right down the block, peering in windows, searching between cars. Nothing. I ran back, scanning the cars and the buildings across the street. I met Wallace where I’d started as he ran back from checking the street in the other direction.

“Did you see anything?” I asked him.

“Not a damn thing.”

“We’ve got to talk to Victoria.”

“First I have to call 911, and my office.”

“But I have to talk to her first,” I insisted.

“Then talk fast. I can lose my job—or get thrown in jail—if I don’t follow protocol.”

He pressed a button on his phone and put it to his ears, and I ran back to the apartment.

When I reached Victoria and her daughters, she’d gathered both girls into her arms where they cried together on the small scrap of concrete outside the door to their home.

“Victoria, I need you to talk to me. I need you to tell me everything.
Pronto
.”

“You not find her?”

I shook my head and pointed to her apartment. She set the girls down and headed inside, holding tight to two little hands. She sat at her kitchen table, and pulled her children up onto either side of her lap.

I didn’t have time to be warm and fuzzy. The cops would be here soon, and I needed answers. “Start from the beginning, Victoria Nunez.”

I pulled a yellow pad and pen from my Redrope.

Victoria wiped her eyes and nodded. “I keep Valentina while Sofia working. I watch TV and see news that the
policia
arrest Sofia. Sofia tell me that if anything happen to her, hide Valentina, so I-I-I . . .” She put both her hands over her face and sobbed momentarily, then gathered herself and continued. “So I tell people Valentina mine.”

I nodded. “Good. Now, have you ever seen the men whose pictures I showed you, or any other men around here?”

“No, never, but Valentina talk about her papa. Say he tell her and her mama to come here on the train that goes underground. Only, when they get there, it’s a bus with a dog on it. She say he’s coming, that he come soon. That he stay and work so the mean cowboy who’s scared of Indians can make pretty jewelry.” She threw up her hands and shrugged. “I do not understand her, but she say it.”

None of it made sense to me, either. I scribbled notes verbatim, frantically, and prayed I’d be able to decipher them later.

“Did she tell you where her father worked?” I asked.

Wallace walked in and took one of the seats.

“She say Mexico.”

“What did Sofia say about him?”

“She never say nothing.” Victoria nuzzled the side of the head of the sobbing older girl and squeezed her little one.

“What did Valentina have when the man took her? What was she wearing?”

“She still in Barbie clothes, pink, and the man have a gun. Valentina’s brave, she grab her backpack and try to run away, but he catch her.” Victoria choked on a sob, then spoke again. “She drop her doll. She love her doll.”

“What did the backpack look like?”

“Pink Barbie. Valentina like everything pink Barbie.”

“What did she have in it?”

Victoria’s eyes widened. “She never lets anyone touch it. I don’t know.”

That was weird. I wasn’t an expert on little girls, but from what I’d seen and what I remembered from my own childhood, a little girl showed off her treasures, got them out and took a loving daily inventory, caressed them and sang to them. I heard sirens outside, and my racing heart sped up even faster. I had to hurry.

“Tell me about the man who took her,” I said. “What did he look like?”

“Big man, white, no hair on his head, and a tattoo here—” she pointed to the inside of her left upper arm, “that say E-S-L.” She pronounced it Ay-Essay-Ellay. “But the E’s funny.”

I swung the paper around to her. “Can you draw it?”

She nodded, and did, drawing the Greek letter sigma: Σ.

I heard footsteps outside. “Do you have a picture of Valentina?”

Victoria reached in her pocket and got her phone, nodding. “I text you one, yes?”

“Yes.” I said my number and she typed it and hit send.

A loud knock sounded at the door. “Police.”

“We’ve gotta let them in,” Wallace said under his breath.

I shoved the paper and pen into my folder. “Thank you, Victoria. You’ve helped Sofia and Valentina a lot. I will tell Sofia. The police will want to talk to you now.”

I placed my hand on hers and gripped it. I squeezed, and she flipped hers and squeezed mine back.

Tears rolled down her cheeks again. She whispered, more to herself than to me, “
Lo siento. Lo siento.
”

Wallace opened the door and let the cops in.

A big-bellied, uni-browed police officer with basset-hound eyes and a bad attitude questioned both of us. Officer Samson. I made a mental note not to get in his way in the future, but he let Wallace and me go an hour after he arrived.

I’d texted Jack moments after the police got there:
Must talk ASAP. Where are you?

I hoped he wasn’t mad that three o’clock had long since passed. I kept sneaking peeks at my phone, but heard nothing until we were walking away to the car.

Jack:
Driving to PCCB.

PCCB, PCCB, PCCB? I realized I had stopped and was tapping my foot. Relax girl, I told myself. I didn’t do my best thinking when I let myself get all jacked up. I took several deep breaths and tried again. PCCB . . . Potter County Courts Building. I nodded.

I texted:
Meet you there.

I climbed into the Altima. Wallace pulled four wipes out and handed me two. I sanitized like the Energizer Bunny, my adrenaline still pumping.

“Can you drop me at the Potter County Courts Building?” I asked. “I have to meet Jack.” I dropped my wipes in the little trashcan and buckled in.

“On my way.” He peeled rubber. “You’re good at this, you know?”

I blew air through my pressed lips. “I don’t know about that, but I really, really want to find this little girl.”

He nodded. “Me, too. Hey, can I get a copy of your notes from your interviews with Victoria?”

“Absolutely. I’ll scan them for you now. Just call or text later if you have questions.”

I used Tiny Scan on my phone to text them to him while he drove, holding myself upright as he took all the corners too fast, like he’d done on the way to Harvey’s place. He had some legit driving skills. I hit send on my text to him and looked up. He had pulled into the parking lot behind a familiar building that looked a heck of a lot like
2001: A Space Odyssey
’s version of a courthouse. I’d never had reason to go to the PCCB in my youth, but I had been in the old art deco Potter County Court
house
. The Courts Building was nothing like that one.

I turned to Wallace. “It’s my first time here, and—”

He smiled and pointed. “Through the back door there. Security’s just inside it.”

Security. “Oh no.”

“Huh?”

“I forgot about going through a metal detector.”

He frowned. “You’re packing?”

“Yeah.”

He guffawed and slapped his knee. “You really are an ‘Amarilla’ girl, aren’t you?” He said, aping the local accent like a native.

“Guilty. And yet I forgot my handbag in the car when we were at Harvey’s house. How smart was that?”

He opened his glove compartment. “Stash it in there, Annie Oakley. They probably won’t even make you go through the metal detectors—I’ll bet every attorney in that building’s carrying—but better safe than sorry. And you’re going to have to come bail me out if I get thrown in jail for possessing it without a license.”

I put my treasured gun in the glove box and grinned. “Of course. Thank you. For everything.”

“You, too. We did good today.”

“Yes, we did.” I put my hand on the door handle and tucked the Redrope folder and handbag under my arm, then stopped. “We’re going to find her, aren’t we? I mean, she’s got to be okay.”

Wallace leaned toward me and snagged me in a hug. “I sure hope so. I’ll be on my knees praying we do, morning and night.”

I twisted and put my arm around him, squeezing tight for a long few seconds. I loved that Wallace was a man of faith. Did he manage to find a church here where he felt at home? I made a mental note to ask him later. Mother’s church was a no-go, but I was pretty sure I’d go to Hell if I didn’t expose my baby to religion, starting in utero. I almost laughed at the thought. This was more a sign I was an “Amarilla” girl than even my concealed handgun permit or the lessons at the shooting range along with the engraved baby Glock 26 (now in Wallace’s glove box) that my father had given me on my fifteenth birthday. “Wrong girl,” it said around the mouth of the barrel.

We released each other and I bounded out of the car.

“Wait,” he hollered, and I stopped. “For your safety, take the ramp, on the left.”

“What?”

He pointed toward the building. “When it’s dry, always use the ramp. When it’s wet, always use the stairs. It’s maintained by the county.” He rolled his eyes. “Just trust me.”

I laughed and waved goodbye and took off for the courthouse. My feet pounded a quick drumbeat on the sidewalk. Jack had just reached the top of the ramp, so I called out to him. He looked my way, saw me, and waited. He didn’t appear pissed, but he didn’t look warm and fuzzy either.

I picked up my pace for the last few steps up the tiled incline and over an oddly painted metal bridge of some sort.

“Thanks,” I said. “So glad I caught you.”

“I’m in a hurry,” he said. “We’ll talk inside.”

“Okay.”

We entered, and he gestured toward the security station. The PCCB was shaped like an L inside from this direction, with security jammed into the corner at its base with a corridor to the right as its horizontal line, and a corridor in front of us as its vertical line.

“What is that odor?” I asked Jack. The whole place smelled musty and vaguely unhealthy.

“Vanity, plus precipitation.”

“Jack, seriously, what is it?”

“This place leaks like a sieve.”

“Ah.”

I plopped my now-two-pounds-lighter handbag onto the conveyor belt and walked slowly through the scanner.

“Hello, Mr. Holden.” The Potter County Deputy manning the scanner looked at Jack like a long-lost friend, his white teeth gleaming except for the missing left eyetooth.

“How’s your sciatica?” Jack walked around the security station while he chatted.

“Pains me something fierce when it rains, but, other than that, I can’t complain.”

“Take care, Lucius.”

“You too, Mr. Holden.”

Lucius waved me through the metal detector, and I collected my handbag on the other side.

Just then, I heard a commotion. I turned to see a female deputy handcuffing the man behind me in the line. A Leatherman tool lay out on the conveyor belt, but that didn’t seem to be the problem.

The woman—a dead ringer for my mother—held a baggie in front of the man’s face and said, “Sir, you are under arrest for possession of an illegal controlled substance.”

Jack pulled me along by my upper arm. “Happens all the time.”

“What?”

“Some poor sap surrenders his knife only to have his dope fall out right in front of the deputies.”

I laughed. “Another potential client.”

“Somebody has to protect their rights, and it keeps me from digging ditches.”

We headed to the elevators. There were two, but one had a piece of white copier paper taped to it. In large, black print it read OUT OF ODER. While I started telling Jack about the day’s discoveries, Jack pressed the up button, then pulled a pen from his briefcase.

“I found out a lot more about Sofia, but something even bigger happened.”

Jack drew an R below and between the O and D with an upward pointing arrow. Then he wrote (-1 Sp) at the top of the paper. The elevator doors opened, revealing a floor that looked like the top of a bunch of blue Legos and walls plastered with sheets of wood-grained paper. I stopped speaking. Two men in business suits stepped out, one looking like any ol’ attorney in Dallas, and the other in boots, a felt Cowboy hat, and a Western-cut suit with snazzy lapel stitching. We got on, and before we turned around, I saw a flier for “Birthday Cake! Cheryl is turning the big 5-0! Join us in the District Clerk’s Office for Cake and Fun!” taped to the back of the elevator. Jack pressed the button for the fifth floor.

“Go on,” he said.

“We found Valentina. I mean, we found where she’d been staying.”

He raised his eyebrows.

I took that as, “Great job. Please continue.” So I did. “She was with the neighbor who babysat her, Victoria, who was also Sofia’s emergency contact at work, but that’s beside the point. Sofia had made Victoria promise to hide Valentina if anything ever happened to her. And, at first, Victoria lied to us and said she didn’t know where Valentina was. But then the apartment manager said Victoria just had two daughters, and there were three girls there when I interviewed her. As we were talking to Mr. Slum Lord, Victoria and her girls started screaming their heads off, so we ran back.” I stopped to breathe.

The elevator doors opened on the fifth floor. A woman with a cane and long silver hair got on before we could get off. Jack pressed the Open Doors button and we waited for her to situate herself.

“First floor, please,” she said in a voice that didn’t waver.

He pressed the 1 button, with his index finger this time, and we slipped out before the doors closed, in front of two soft drink machines covered in more fliers.

“Keep talking.” He pointed to our right and we walked into a large foyer, then he turned left toward the doors of the DA’s office.

“And one of the little girls was gone. A man had just kidnapped Valentina. We ran after him, but we didn’t get a look at him.”

“Did you see his car, get a license plate?”

“No, nothing.”

“Jiminy Christmas.”

He pulled open the door to the DA’s office and I walked ahead of him into a very small foyer.

I lowered my voice. “I know. Then Wallace called 911, so I hurried in to talk to Victoria before the cops could get there. And that’s when she told me everything, only it made no sense, and we still have no idea where Valentina is, or who took her. But Victoria sent me a picture.”

I pulled it up and put my phone in front of his face. He stopped, gazing for a second with me at Sofia, sans bruises and swelling with her pink-clad little angel. Then he broke away and nodded to the large blonde woman who was looking at us from behind a glass panel. She was surrounded at her desk by framed inspirational religious quotes, pictures of horses (my kind of woman), and photos of her with two look-alike girls.

“Jack Holden. I have an appointment with ADA—”

The woman interrupted him, her voice thick with small-town Panhandle twang. “Oh yes. Just a moment. You can wait over in the lobby.”

Jack’s brows furrowed and we walked back into the small waiting area behind us. He lowered his voice, a little, and said, “I hate it when these prima donna ADAs make me wait. I never made a defense attorney sit out here like a kid outside the principal’s office when I was an ADA.”

Just as we were about to take seats, a new woman’s voice said, “Jack.” It was a voice that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

Both of us whirled. It was Melinda, tucked into a black pencil skirt and starched, white, tailored blouse that fit like a leotard. I fought the urge to lick my thumb and scrub the dirty spots off my jeans from my earlier tumbles. Instead, I fluffed my bangs and smoothed the sides of my ponytail.

She did a double take. “Emily. What are you doing here?”

Before I could answer, Jack did. “Emily’s my paralegal. I assume she’s welcome at our meeting?”

“Um, yeah. Sure. Right this way.”

Was it my imagination, or did her pressed lips mean my presence irritated her? Or maybe it disappointed her? She’d looked at Jack a moment ago like a red-tailed hawk I’d once seen lock eyes on a rabbit seconds before snatching it into the sky, twenty feet from where I sat daydreaming in summer grass. I’d had nightmares about hawks for a week after that. Oddly enough, I’d had nightmares about Melinda for twenty years.

The door past the receptionist’s area buzzed, and we followed Melinda’s sashaying hips through it and down a hall to an open door on our left. She gestured for us to go in.

Right before we entered what looked like a small conference room, I whispered to Jack. “I just don’t know how we’re going to tell Sofia.”

He looked me in the eyes, and something in them caught me off guard and sent my heart lurching into my throat. I stopped, and he did, too. He smiled at me. Automatically, idiotically, I smiled back, and I felt myself go all gooey. He had the most amazing tawny eyes, especially when they looked at me like that.

Long seconds later, he finally turned to Melinda and said, “So, what’s this emergency summons about anyway?”

We walked in and she shut the door with a heavy thud. I put my hands to my cheeks to see if they were as hot as they felt. They were. Melinda and I both took seats—her at the head of the table, and me on the far side—but Jack stood by the chair nearest the door. He’d missed a loop with his belt, and I found myself wanting to fix it for him, which was his wife’s job. That made my cheeks even hotter. How was it that Jack could distract me like this when, seconds ago, I’d been so upset about Valentina’s kidnapping?

Melinda clasped her hands in front of her on the table. “I wanted to tell you in person, before you heard about it on the news. There’s been an incident at the jail.”

Jack stopped short, his hand on the back of a chair. “What kind of incident?”

“The kind where your client Sofia Perez was killed, unfortunately.”

It took a moment for the shock of her words to break through the haze Jack’s eyes had put me in, and I gasped aloud. Sofia, dead? I’d only met her once, but my entire life had revolved around her and her daughter for the last week. Valentina, missing . . . and no longer with a mother, or even a father (that we knew about). Well, I guess we wouldn’t have to worry about how to break the news to Sofia about Valentina after all.

To my horror, I burst into tears.