His eyes glaze over and he stares through me. His face falls.
“Oh, honey, look, I’m sorry, forgot to say, invite’s only for one. Wait a minute, look, tell you what, do you want me to call up and ask if he’d mind or…” His voice trails off.
I try not to smile. Would he really do it if I asked him?
“No, no, thank you, Jack. I have a million things to do.”
Relief. Maybe Katie or Kelly has a sister.
I kiss him on the cheek and he calls Youkilis. I don’t think he even notices me when I slip out.
Five minutes later I’m walking back down the hill to the crossing.
In town I stop at Starbucks and order an espresso. It comes in a giant cup. Even when I add sugar it’s about as far from a Cuban coffee as
I shoulder the backpack and continue on. Past the trophy-wife stores, the ski shops, the delis, up the other hill to Wetback Mountain.
A police cruiser waiting outside the motel.
Might be a deputy, might be unrelated to me and the garage, but I can’t take the chance. The last thing I want is another encounter with that psychopath. I step off the road and disappear into the woods. I walk through the pine cones and fallen branches and sit on a log.
There’s a river running through the trees. The quiet glade reminds me of Rio Jaimanitas, just outside Havana.
Time to think. Think about suspects, think about the clock.
Suspects. Their talk has more or less cleared Esteban. They thought he was involved in a blackmail plot about the accident. Ergo it can’t be him. I never thought it was. Ricky’s hunch-who kills a man and leaves his car unrepaired for six months? Still, I’d like one last interview to ask him about his deer.
Not E. Not Mrs. C., not in a million years. It’s Y.
Jack has given him to me. Jack and his good buddy the sheriff. Y. Y. Y.
The clock. Sunday morning. My flight from Mexico City to Havana is early Tuesday. So by this time tomorrow I need to be on the bus to El Paso. Cross over, to Juarez. Flight from Juarez to Mexico City. Jesus, it’s tight. I certainly don’t have all the information. In Havana I’d call this half a case. I’d need another full week’s work before I’d even think about going to Hector with the file. But that’s there and this is here. Here Briggs is on my neck and my options have collapsed into one simple thought:
Fairview disappeared. The road narrowed from four lanes to two and the houses on either side quickly became swallowed up by forest. Beech Street was not meant for pedestrians. There was no sidewalk, and when cars approached they pulled all the way over to the left lane, annoyed at the presence of someone on foot.
In another five minutes so thick were the trees that it was hard to believe there were any houses at all. Mailboxes and driveways the only clues. The smell of douglas fir, aspen. The crunch underfoot of golden, red, and black pinecones.
I counted down the addresses on the mailboxes. 94, 92, 90.
A cold, prickly feeling on my scalp as I got closer, and I had to pause for a moment when the mailbox said 88.
“This is it,” I said aloud.
When Ricky came to Fairview, he’d gone to the garage, he’d walked the Old Boulder Road, he’d visited the motel, he’d taken photographs of Jack’s car and Esteban’s Range Rover, but this little job he’d left for me.
I hesitated at the gate and then went in. Cement driveway. Underfoot more pinecones, beech leaves, a flattened Starbucks cup. The path bent to the left and there, suddenly, was the house. Single-story Colorado ranch style. Modest in proportion to other homes in Fairview but boldly painted yellow and elaborately festooned with flowerpots and hanging baskets, some of the blooms gamely hanging on even though it was December.
It was shady here and frost coated a neat square of garden and several of the close-trimmed rosebushes that surrounded the house like a primitive siege defense.
I stepped over an ornamental gnome with a fishing pole, half a dozen free newspapers, and squirrel shit. I knocked on the door.
She took a minute to open it.
She was pretty. She looked about thirty but I knew she was older than that. She had black hair cut short in bangs, cornflower-blue eyes, arched, surprised-looking dark eyebrows, high cheekbones, full lips with a crease in the lower. If it wasn’t early on Sunday and if the past few months hadn’t been such an obvious trial to her, she’d be a knockout. Dad’s type? Certainly. And I had a feeling that a year from now she wouldn’t be alone.
“Hello?” she said, groggily. Her breath: coffee, cigarettes, last night’s red wine.
“My name is Sue Hernandez, I’m from the Mexican consulate in Denver,” I said and offered her my hand. After a second’s hesitation she shook it.
“What can I do for you, Senorita Hernandez?” she asked.
“We’re looking into the death of Alberto Suarez. I’ve come here to ask you a few questions, if that’s ok.”
She stood there in the doorway, pulled her nightgown tighter about her. It only accentuated her big breasts.
“On a Sunday?”
“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Fuck it. What’s all this about?” she asked.
“Senora Suarez, your husband was a Mexican citizen, and the embassy routinely investigates all suspicious deaths of Mexican citizens in the United States.”
“Not this again.”
“This will be the last time, I assure you. May I come in?”
She shook her head. “The place is a mess.”
“I don’t mind that,” I said, realizing that I was actually more desperate to get in the house than I was to meet her. I wanted to see relics: family photographs, art, souvenirs. The interior of number 88 would be a ghost house filled with memories.
“No. I’ve been through this before. With the cops and someone who phoned me from your embassy, already. And now you’re here. Clearly, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing.”
I smiled. “It’s just a few questions. Please, may I come in?”
“No, you can’t. Look, I don’t have all day. What are your questions?”
“They’re about the accident.”
“Yeah, you said that. Just ask the questions.”
“You husband worked as a pest controller.”
“Yeah, he was overqualified for that. He was a smart guy. Killing rats, trapping raccoons, it was gross.”
“Yes. But what was your husband doing on the Old Boulder Road? According to our records his last job was at the Hermes store on Pearl Street. He didn’t have-”
“He was drinking.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I didn’t like him to drink, so he used to go up there. There’s a viewpoint two-thirds of the way up, a cliff where you can see the whole Front Range. A couple of kids committed suicide there. He used to go there, drink, look at the mountains, walk it off before he saw me.”
“So he
Karen shook her head. “I doubt it. We had a big blowup last year, I threatened to leave him, I’ve never seen him blind drunk since then. He was smart about it.”
