Chapter 13
There’s something about the idea of a man killing his wife—or in this case, his ex-wife—that I have a hard time understanding. I turned it over and over in my mind, trying to make sense of the theory that Johnny could have killed Marisol. I spent the night tossing and turning, thinking about it, moonlight filtering through the louvered blinds covering the window. Agatha had curled up in a tight little spiral beside me, oblivious to the turmoil that had prevented me from falling asleep. She slept like a log, moving only when I readjusted her head to stop her light snore.
No murder is justified. I know that. But a man killing his wife seemed particularly heinous. The fact that Marisol was Johnny’s former wife added distance to their connection. Except, of course, they weren’t distant, because Marisol had reached out to Johnny and had wanted to meet him.
On the day she died.
At the location of her death.
When I thought about perception, I knew Johnny was right to be scared of sharing this information with the police. The message from Marisol made him an obvious suspect. I didn’t want to believe that he could be behind her death. In my mind, it always came down to the children. They’d raised a family together. They had grandchildren. Marisol’s death had taken a toll on her children. It didn’t matter that they were adults. What mattered was that someone they each loved with all their heart was dead. I couldn’t fathom a father choosing to put his children and grandchildren through that pain.
But, I reminded myself again, Marisol had wanted to meet with him. At the pier. And then she’d died. It could have had to do with David, for all I knew, but somehow I didn’t think so. If I went with my gut, all roads at the moment seemed to point to Johnny.
At some point, I finally drifted off. I didn’t sleep long before I woke with a start at the clanking sound of a truck somewhere outside. I sat bolt upright, realization hitting. Garbage day! I’d completely forgotten! I jumped from the bed, not taking the time to pull on socks or slippers, and raced to the garage. I pressed the garage door button and headed straight to the corner where the green recycle and blue trash cans sat. I grabbed the first one, using my bare foot to lever it onto its two back wheels, then I spun it around and hauled it down the driveway and onto the street just in front of the curb.
The hulking city waste-management truck, with its massive pronged lift system, was in front of my neighbor’s house after having made its way down Maple Street. The driver maneuvered the forks of the lift to grip the blue can next door, lifting it up and over, letting the contents spill into the hopper. He did the same for the green can after he pulled the truck forward, dumping the recyclables into a different compartment in the truck’s hopper.
I ran back into the garage, dragging my second can to the street just as the massive truck lurched forward, stopping in front of my house. I’d gotten the cans out in the nick of time. The driver emptied the cans, gave me a wave and a smile, threw the truck into gear, and it jerked toward the next house on the street.
Now that my adrenaline had receded to normal, I felt the chill of the cement of the sidewalk against my feet and the cold breeze against my body. I folded my arms across my chest and hurried back inside. Part of me wanted to crawl back into bed and snuggle up next to Agatha, but reason kicked in. I had places to go. People to see. A murder to solve.
The bottom line was that I knew I had to get out of the house to clear my head. I decided to start by taking Agatha for a short walk at the shore before heading to Yeast of Eden. Olaya was short-handed today, so I’d offered to help for a few hours. It would also give me a chance to fill her in.
I bundled up in a heavy UT Austin sweatshirt, snapped Agatha into her green and black harness, and drove to the little parking lot near one of Santa Sofia’s state beaches. We headed down the pathway running alongside the cement retaining wall. Beyond the expanse of sand, violent whitecaps topped dark, tumultuous waters.
The ocean water seemed to reflect my thoughts last night as I’d tried to fathom what Johnny could be involved in that would have caused Marisol to have nightmares about blood and bones. I drew a blank. The guy worked in a credit union. Unless he was involved in the unsavory underbelly of the loan industry, which involved loan sharks and other disreputable people—and did that even exist in Santa Sofia?—then I couldn’t make a connection.
I tried to move on with my thinking, but then circled back around. Johnny had given me good advice about living in my house for a while before making changes, but then he’d said something odd. A second against my home mortgage was possible, but then he’d said there were other ways to get the money I might need. What had he meant by that? Ways of borrowing money off the books? Separate from the banking system? Could he be involved in something less than aboveboard? Maybe it wasn’t so farfetched.
I played devil’s advocate. If I assumed that Johnny was, indeed, involved in some sort of illegal enterprise—gambling . . . money laundering. . . prostitution . . . loansharking, then I was also assuming that whatever it was, Marisol found out. Would Marisol have protected him if he was doing something illegal? Would that make her an accomplice after the fact? Or a coconspirator? I didn’t know the legalities in such a situation, but it seemed to me that Marisol would be putting herself in a sticky situation if she’d known something incriminating and was keeping that secret.
That begged another question, though. What if she wasn’t keeping it secret? Could she have intended to blackmail Johnny? Was that why she wanted to meet with him on the pier?
Agatha had been obediently trotting along beside me, picking up speed when I did or slowing down when I got bogged down with my thinking and my pace lagged. “If Marisol knew something about Johnny, I don’t think she told David,” I said to Agatha. The guy was genuinely distraught and might be drinking himself into oblivion at this very moment. If he thought Johnny was involved in some way, I couldn’t see him keeping it to himself.
“But the color of the swimsuit was wrong,” I muttered, remembering what Lisette had said about her mom’s superstition. Agatha looked up at me. Her ears were back, her tail curled happily. “If Lisette is right, wouldn’t Johnny have known about her affinity for the color blue? Could he have just forgotten?”
Agatha barked in response.
“Yeah, he might have,” I said, reasoning that they’d been divorced, and who knows what their relationship had really been like prior to them splitting up. He very well may have forgotten about Marisol’s superstition. Or, more likely, he was agitated over whatever it was that she knew and hadn’t been thinking clearly.
I did an about-face and headed back to the car, anxious to get to the bread shop to talk through this theory with Olaya, because what I didn’t know how to do at the moment was find out what Johnny Morales might be involved in.
* * *
More than an hour passed at the bread shop before it slowed down enough for me to help Olaya in the kitchen rather than in the front of the store. The table she used as a desk took up a good portion of her little office, but she’d managed to get a small chair in the room, opposite the desk, which is where I sat. She turned her computer to the side so I could see the screen. “This is the menu for the funeral,” she said as she closed the notebook she’d had with her when she’d met with Lisette at the funeral home.
I read through the list of baked goods, both savory and sweet, my stomach rumbling. I hadn’t eaten since the banana I’d had during my walk with Agatha. I hadn’t been hungry then, but now I was starving. “I’ll be right back,” I said, leaving Olaya to stare after me while I foraged for something to eat. I returned to the office a few minutes later carrying a plate laden with a stem of red grapes and several slices of a peppery cheese, both of which I’d found in the fridge, and a small baguette from one of the bakery racks.
“Ivy, mija,” she said, gesturing first to my plate then to the clock on the wall. “You take things too much to heart if you are not taking care of yourself. You must eat.”
“I know,” I said as I tore off a piece of the bread, added a bit of the cheese, finishing the bite off by popping a grape into my mouth. Olaya was right. I’d been so wrapped up in my head during my walk with Agatha, and then had been in a rush to get to the bread shop, that I’d simply forgotten. That didn’t happen often.
We both turned back to the menu for the funeral and I read the list.
Carnitas sliders
Air-fried shrimp with lemon and chili
Albóndigas with bread
Black bean and corn mini tostadas
Cheese and chili quesadillas
Asparagus mini quiches
Baked brie en croûte with spicy fig compote
Butternut squash and bacon tarts
Bite-sized scones
Mini pan dulce
Lemon curd and strawberry butter
Olaya was pulling out all the stops for one of her sister’s closest friends. The celebration of Marisol’s life was going to be a feast for the palate. “Baptista’s is doing the carnitas, but the rest? Is that you?” I asked.
“Miguel and I, we have divided the items. He is making the spicy fig compote, but I will make the puff pastry for the baked brie. I will make the pastry for the tarts, but he will do the filling. He will do the tostadas and the quesadillas, the albóndigas, and the shrimp, and I will make the breads to accompany them. I will make the scones and the pan dulce, of course. The timing of it all will be important. Your Miguel will be busy today.”
The tune to the Beatles song “Michelle” suddenly played in my head. My Miguel. It had a nice ring to it. “So will we,” I said.
She smiled. “Exactamente.”
My cell phone rang. I dug it out of my back pocket, swallowing the bite of bread and cheese I’d just taken before answering. Emmaline’s voice greeted me. “We’re releasing the body to Vista Ridge,” she said.
“Funeral’s tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “Any new information?” With the body having been underwater, I didn’t know what other forensic evidence might surface, but I suspected there wouldn’t be much.
Em confirmed that with a succinct no, then followed it up with a single question that was full of hope. “You?”
I hesitated. All I had were suppositions and theories, none with evidence to back them up at this point. Until I had more, I didn’t relish throwing anyone under the bus. I did, however, recognize that my best friend had resources that I did not. “Not really, but did you find a will?” I asked, still wondering about the house and the beneficiaries.
“She had one. Redone after she and David Ruiz married.”
“Does he inherit the house?” I asked. The theory that Johnny was involved in something illegal was thin. Marisol’s property, however, was incredibly valuable. I hated thinking it could be a reason for murder, but there it was. Money and greed topped the list of motives for killing.
“It goes to her husband, with a provision that he does not sell it for ten years. At that point, it is to be sold to her three children for a price of—get this—one dollar.”
I stuck my finger in my ear and wiggled it, wondering if I’d heard correctly. “Let me get this straight. David inherits the house, which is worth a pretty penny—”
“In excess of a million and a half, I’d say. At least.”
“—but he can’t sell it for ten years. And whenever he does sell it, assuming he does—”
“No, the way it reads, he has to sell it at ten years—”
“But only the Ruiz kids can buy it?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“Is that enforceable?” I asked. “I mean, can you make that kind of a stipulation in a will?”
“We’re looking into that, believe me. Whether or not it’s enforceable, though, the three kids have something big to gain. They also had a possible grudge. Ten years is a long time to wait if you want something now.”
“But that would be a motive to get David out of the way.”
“True.”
What was Marisol’s state of mind? Her kids might have grounds to contest her will if they thought she’d not been of sound mind. If she’d been worried about her mental health or her brain function, that might be enough for them to stop David from inheriting. They might not want to wait ten years. They could easily say that he’d coerced her, or that she’d been mentally incapable of looking out for her own best interest, although he would gain only an awesome house to live in rather than a million-plus dollars.
But then there was the issue of the swimsuit. Her children would have known about her superstition.
I could hear the tap tap tap of Emmaline’s fingers as she typed something on her computer keyboard. She was a multitasker, and since she’d become the sheriff, she was rarely able to devote even five undivided minutes to someone on the other end of a phone call. When we were together in person, she was present, but across cellular waves, she was always thinking about something else at the same time she was talking or listening to me. I knew she was thinking about the motive for Marisol’s murder.
“Gotta go,” Emmaline said abruptly, severing the connection. I tucked my phone away, uneasy. Why would Marisol have cut all of her kids out of inheriting the house immediately upon her death?
“What is happening with the investigation?” Olaya asked, closing up the computer and heading into the kitchen.
I told her what Emmaline had said about the will and the house. Olaya tsked. “How well does Miguel know this man, David Ruiz?”
“That is a good question,” I said. Miguel and I had made plans for dinner with his sister and her husband. Sergio might be able to shed some light on his and his siblings’ relationship with their mother. In the meantime, I decided to track down Ruben.
“Take them bread,” Olaya said after I told her where I was headed. She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Crusty sourdough, I think.”
“David’s not the only suspect in my mind,” I told her as I pulled two loaves of sourdough from a bakery rack and slid them into paper bread bags.
“Who else?” she asked. She had pulled out containers of flour and salt and had set to work creating a dough out of just those ingredients. She measured, mixed, and then turned the mixture onto her work surface, creating a trough in the center of the pile. She added water and deftly fluffed the mixture, repeating until it started to clump together.
Puff pastry, I realized as she pressed it all into a ball, rolled it up in plastic wrap, and placed it in the refrigerator to chill. Later, she’d roll it out with her French rolling pin, lay a slab of butter in the center, and fold the dough in on itself before rolling it out again and repeating. The process of rolling the butter into the dough created the flaky layers of puff pastry.
As she set to work making another batch, I summed up my wonderings about Johnny Morales, ending with, “He’s obviously not going to tell me if he’s involved in anything shady, so I’ve been thinking about how to find out.”
Her hands had continued to work the dough while she’d listened. Now she looked up at me, her fingertips resting lightly on the countertop. “When I was a girl in Mexico, my sisters and I, we did not have many toys or books. There was not much to do in our little village. We had to entertain ourselves. Games of the imagination. I remember there was a time when our uncle, he acted very strange. Suspicious, as if he had something to hide. We were obsessed about it, my sisters and me. For days and days, we followed him, sometimes on foot, sometimes on our rickety bicycles, but always with stark determination. I baked bread for him, thinking that if I added certain herbs, the truth would be revealed to us somehow. Of course I was not well-versed in my baking at that time.”
One of the things I adored about Olaya was her storytelling. She could weave a tale as easily as she could bake a loaf of bread; neither were particularly easy to do, but she did both with aplomb. “Did you find out what he was up to?” I asked.
“Yes and no. We found that when you want to see something suspicious, you can make yourself believe anything. If he blinked, we thought our uncle was surely hiding something. If he sneezed, we thought he was evading a question. When he made a phone call, we knew he was talking to someone he should not be. We were very certain that he was in a relationship with someone off-limits. A married woman, we thought. Or another man, posiblemente. But, alas, it was not those things.”
“What was it?”
“It was nothing!” she said. “He felt himself being followed, pero he did not know it was his nieces playing detectives. He was in a relationship with a woman—an eligible woman—but he thought that maybe her father did not think him good enough. He thought that perhaps the man was trying to scare him away.”
“But he wasn’t.”
She shook her head, amusement crossing her face. “He was not. It was Consuelo, Martina, and me. We created a story where there had been none.”
“Did your uncle end up with the woman?”
She laughed, waving her flour-coated hand in the air. “No, no. She was no good. She had too many men. We saved our uncle from that mistake, even though he did not see it at the time.”
“I’m not sure what this has to do with Johnny,” I said, knowing that it did in some way, shape, or form.
“We suspected our uncle. We were wrong, but if we had not followed him, he would have found out the hard way about his woman.”
Her point dawned on me. “So you’re saying I could be wrong about Johnny, but if there’s no one else to prove or disprove my theory, then I need to follow him and he’ll lead me to the truth.”
“What I am saying, mija, is that what we think we see or know may not be the truth at all. We must break through the surface to find out what lies beneath.”