I Shall Not Want

'What about Isabel Christie?' Clare wondered. 'Did she-'

Amado tensed. 'Isobel?'

She had said to Russ, He can't say boo to a woman. She had said to Lyle, So there was something there. Clare met Amado's dark eyes. 'You.' She pointed to him. 'It was you and Isabel.'

His gaze shifted away. He glanced at the men sitting around them, their faces divided between worry and interest. Hadley stood. 'Amado,' she began. Clare got to her feet as well, wishing like hell her languages weren't limited to written Greek and Hebrew. With dictionaries by her side.

She was good at reading faces, though. As Hadley spoke, Amado's altered, from stony to pained, to horrified. He was hearing how his brother died. Clare laid her hand on Hadley's arm. 'Go easy,' she said.

'I want him to understand what's at stake. There are more of those guys out there. If he knows anything, we have to have it.'

Amado straightened. He looked at the sky, the blue leached away in the heat of the sun. He looked at the other men. He looked at Hadley. 'Come.' He turned and strode toward the bunkhouse.

'What?' Clare said, hurrying to catch up.

'I don't know.' Hadley hustled after her. The grass in the lane was brittle, the strawflowers and Queen Anne's lace already dry. The corn was stunted, with dull, cracked leaves.

'Tell him what I say, okay?' Clare lengthened her stride. 'Amado. I met Isabel in the hospital. Did you know she had been wounded?'

Hadley spoke. Amado stumbled. Glanced over his shoulder at her. Resumed walking. 'She is okay?'

'She was released on Friday.' She paused, just long enough for Hadley to translate. 'She thinks you're dead. It hit her hard. Very hard.' She thought of the young woman's blank face while Hadley spoke and Amado replied in a low voice. The sense that Isabel had gone beyond caring.

'He says it's just as well.' Hadley skip-hopped to keep up with them. They crested the rise. Below them, a thread of water trickled across the lane through a stony streambed. The bunkhouse baked in the sun beside it. 'He says she's not for him and he's not for her. I dunno. Maybe she spun a romance out of a few meaningful glances?'

'I don't think so.' Clare plunged forward and grabbed Amado's arm before he could enter the old farmhouse. Tugged him around to face her. She touched the silver cross hanging beneath her collar. Hoped the black and white would have an effect on him, even if she was an Anglican woman, and not a Roman man. 'What if she's pregnant?'

Hadley copied her authoritarian tone.

Amado's mouth opened. '?Embarazada?' He looked terrified and hopeful.

'Oh-ho,' Hadley said. 'You nailed that one on the head.'

'Tell him I don't know. But he needs to come with me and let her see he's still alive. If he wants to break it off with her after that, fine.'

He smoothed over his initial shock and listened to Hadley's translation with an impassive face. He looked at Clare. She stared back. 'Okay,' he finally said. 'I go with you. For good-bye.' He nodded stiffly and disappeared into the bunkhouse.

'Huh.' Hadley propped her hand on her hip and fanned her face. 'Me-thinks the lady doth protest too much. Or the man, in this case.'

'I'm not trying to play Cupid. I was worried enough about Isabel's state of mind to put in a word with the hospital counseling folks. She blames herself for Amado's death-Octavio's death. You know what I mean. I think seeing him alive and well will let her forgive herself for accidentally setting her brothers on him. On his brother.' She batted away a buzzing fly. 'Whatever.'

'Speaking of brothers, have you considered they might not be too thrilled if you bring yet another Latino guy to their farm?'

'I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.'

'Don't you mean-' The sun-blistered door creaked open. Amado stepped out.

'Here.' He thrust something at Hadley. 'Esto es lo que deseo el Punta Diablos.' He sounded like a soldier at last laying down his arms.

Hadley stared at the black-and-white composition book in her hands. She flipped it open. Ran one finger down a handwritten page. 'Holy shit.' She looked up at Clare. 'The chief was right. It's the distribution list.'

XXV

Clare eased her car up the Christies' drive like a woman easing her way into the haunted house at the county fair. She knew there was nothing to be afraid of. But the sights, the smells, her sense of what-might-have-happened made her heart pound as she parked on the dusty grass and approached the porch steps.

Amado was an indistinct figure in her Subaru, waiting behind tinted windows. She had left the engine running, as much for a quick getaway as for the air-conditioning. She was lucky she had him with her- Hadley had been all for dragging him back to the station for formal questioning. Amado dug in his heels, saying only that he had found the notebook nearby and that he'd tell the police everything he knew after he had seen Isabel. Hadley had been torn between accompanying him and Clare and delivering the list to the station-so torn she had shifted back and forth, back and forth, on the balls of her feet, poised at her cruiser's door.

'I promise,' Clare said. 'I'll bring him in to you as soon as we're done at the Christie place.' Which would also give her time to call Sister Lucia and set her to find a Spanish-speaking lawyer. Russ would have never gone for it, but Hadley, flushed with triumph, her fingers leaving damp prints all over the MKPD's biggest haul of the year, was an easier touch.

Now, approaching the weathered mahogany door she had last seen flung open for cops and EMTs, she wondered if it might not have been a better idea to wait, to have come up here after he was questioned, with Hadley and Kevin Flynn and maybe even Lyle MacAuley in tow. Too late now.

'Fly or die,' she said to herself, pressing the bell.

The shirred curtains in the window shivered. The door opened a hand-breadth. A thin teenaged girl peered out. 'Yeah?'

It wasn't what Clare had been bracing for. 'Um. I would like to see Isabel.'

'How come?'

'I'm Clare Fergusson. I'-the specter of Pastor Bob caused a midcourse correction-'am the chaplain who spoke with Isabel at the hospital. I wanted to see how she was doing.'

'She's fine.' The door swung.

Clare stuck her foot in the jamb. 'I'd like to hear that from her.'

'You can't.' The girl pushed the door a few times, but Clare's lug-soled sandal didn't move.

'Are you Porsche?' The girl looked more like a Chevy Nova, but Clare hadn't named her.

'Yeah.'

'Porsche, your aunt told me that Christies stick together. That you help each other. Is that true?'

'Yeah.'

'Then please let me speak to her. I promise you, you'll be helping her.'

The girl looked at Clare's foot. She released the door, letting it drift open. 'She's not here. I'm'-she checked behind her, as if someone might overhear-'worried about her. Dad and Uncle Bruce and Uncle Neil