• • •
I needn’t have bothered. Not twenty minutes later, the Big Bend County JP, Ellis, and Lightfoot walked in looking like two sides of the same coin. Both wore pressed jeans with a crease down the front, a button-down shirt, and a blazer. Only difference was that Lightfoot wore his sheriff’s-issue Stetson and Ellis wore its straw cousin.
Senora Mari greeted them at the door. “Hola, ¿muy bien?”
“Okay,” they answered in unison. She seemed entranced by their blazers, or maybe it was their bolo ties. Lightfoot wore the turquoise and silver one I’d seen over the past few days while Ellis wore twisted black leather with silver tips.
“You two brothers?” she said with a straight face.
I gently removed the menus from her hands and gave her a look.
“Don’t give me the stink eye. I know they are not brothers.” She pointed to Lightfoot. “He has a ponytail, and the other one, I can see his ears and no little-girl ponytail.”
The whole business with Dani O’Neal had me a bit wigged out. “If you two aren’t just what the doctor ordered.”
As they took their seats, Ellis observed the overflowing room. “You always do this much business?”
“Cinco de Mayo weekend. It’s always this way.”
“Yet you don’t look tuckered out.”
I guffawed. “Don’t let my bright eyes fool you. I’m tired, but I’m excited for the business.”
“This is good.” Senora Mari smiled one of her rare smiles, all teeth and crinkling at the corners of her eyes. “Order the specials, you will be very satisfied.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lightfoot’s gaze traveled to the blackboard and the specials written there.
“Good. Josefina, write these down. Which one do you want?”
“They might want to look at a menu.” I tried to communicate with my tone of voice that it was time for her to go back to her wooden stool at her hostess station, but she ignored me—a special talent of hers.
“Three Amigos is very good.” She tapped her chest. “I created that name. Do you like it?”
Without moving a muscle, I did a mental eye roll. In this part of the country, almost everyone knew that Three Amigos was the name of a Steve Martin movie, an album title by a popular Tejano band, and a menu item in restaurants from Broken Boot to Brenham.
Lightfoot gave the blackboard his somber consideration. “Three Amigos, por favor.”
“I’ll take the Steak Ranchero.” With a smile, Ellis handed back his menu.
Senora Mari gave him a quick once-over. “This does not surprise me.” She handed me the menus. “But you will enjoy it, and that’s what counts.”
I stepped close to the table and lowered my voice. “Did you hear back from Lucky’s surgeon?”
Ellis glared as if I’d stepped into his house with horse hockey on my boots. “That’s not something you need to worry about.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Lightfoot skewered salsa onto his tortilla chip from the green woven basket in the center of the oak table.
“You crazy?” Ellis asked.
“Doesn’t matter because she’s going to ask anyway. And she’s going to keep on asking until you tell her.”
His brow knitted and he glanced at me and then back at Lightfoot. “I have rules to follow, confidentiality policies.”
I wasn’t about to point out that he’d been open about the details of Lucky’s death at the chili cook-off. “I understand.” I gave him a smile, took their drink orders, and hurried off to refill a coffee and two iced teas on my other three tables.
I wasn’t too worried by Ellis’s proclamation. I might be a waitress on the outside, but I was an investigative-reporter-in-training on the inside. And my insides were stronger than any rare and expensive telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis.
Unfortunately, when I returned to their table, Ellis stopped his conversation until I’d delivered their drinks: Dr Pepper for Ellis and black coffee, per usual, for Lightfoot. Still, I wasn’t discouraged. We’re a smallish restaurant and my tables were close together. I refilled drinks and checked on my customers until they certainly must have thought I’d lost all my friends.
“Take these.” Senora Mari tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a tray of two bowls of drunken beans and a large Queso Martinez filled with ground beef, pico de gallo, guacamole, and sour cream.
I must have looked doubtful.
“You drop them off.” She mimed carrying out the tray. “You wait until they have been talking a good minute, and then you slip up slowly behind that one with the ears showing. He will not know you are there until you have overheard part of their conversation.”
“What if I don’t hear the important part?”
She shrugged. “Why ask me, Miss Investigative Reporter?”
I grinned. “I try it again with the entrées, the refills, and the desserts.”
She studied the two men in earnest conversation. “They do not look like the dessert type.”
“Then I give them each one on the house.”
Her eyes narrowed and she pointed a finger to my nose. “If you have to give something away, you give them an order of sopapillas to share.”
“Sí, Abuela.”
“You give them more than one order and it’s Senora Mari to you.” Her words could be cross, but her heart was big—if hidden behind leathered skin and a tight gray bun.
I managed to sneak up on Ellis as Lightfoot was asking him about Lucky’s head injury. “Was it a skillet?” Lightfoot’s eyes flicked with the effort not to look at me, where I stood a foot or so behind Ellis.
“Josie was right.” There was a pause as he turned his head toward the waitress station. “I was able to find flecks of iron consistent with an old cast-iron skillet.
