She looked into her glass of water and took a drink before answering. “I meant to tell you. We’ve just been so busy. I left the case file on your desk.”
My interest piqued. “And?”
“It looks like she had a very hard life, Charley. I didn’t get very far with the file, but I managed to get a copy of her autopsy, the investigation of her disappearance, and the court transcripts of her mother’s trial.”
“Where is she now? Miranda’s mother?”
“She’s in the women’s correctional facility outside Santa Fe.”
I nodded in thought. “Looks like I’ll be making a trip to Santa Fe very soon. Did they give you a cause of death?”
Cook took another drink. “They said most likely blunt force trauma to the head. She was there over a month before they found her body, so it was hard to get an exact cause.”
Since Cookie wanted to talk about Miranda’s case about as much as she wanted her fingernails pulled out with pliers, I veered back to the subject of Amber. “I’m glad that rascal of yours admitted the truth.”
Cookie relaxed the tight grip on her glass. “I am, too. She was more worried about my reaction to her lying than her skipping school and leaving campus with a boy.”
“Told you,” I said with a wink. “I knew it would eat her alive.”
“Yeah, I totally played it up like she’d broken my heart and I would never be the same again.”
“And she fell for it?”
“Hook, line, and sinker.”
19
Do you believe in love at first sight,
or should I walk by again?
— T-SHIRT
Having just received a delivery, Reyes came in from outside with a woman following in his wake. A very familiar-looking woman. One with a determined gait and fire in her eyes. The minute those eyes landed on me, I ducked under the table, my head landing in Cookie’s lap.
“Tell her I’m not here!”
Cookie coughed, then glanced around frantically. “What? Why? Who?”
“Mrs. Garza. Tell her I’m not here.”
“She already saw you,” she said through gritted teeth. “She’s coming this way.”
“Pretend like I passed out and call an ambulance.”
“I am not calling an ambulance to cover for you.”
“No, really, it’ll work.”
“Charley Davidson, they have better things to do with their time than —”
“I can see you from here, Ms. Davidson.”
From underneath the table, I could see Mrs. Garza, too. Though only her bottom half. She had a killer bag slung over her right shoulder, turquoise with a woman’s face painted Día de Muertos style, and if I wasn’t mistaken, she was wearing an amazing pair of Rocketbuster boots. One of which she was tapping impatiently.
That woman had the best clothes. Then again, I was probably paying for them, thanks to her son, aka my investigator, Angel. She’d recently figured out I was the one sending her money every month and insisted I tell her what was going on, why I was depositing five hundred dollars into her account every month. That was until Angel blackmailed me into a raise. Now it was a cool $750, but I figured he was worth it.
But Angel didn’t want her to know. He was so adamantly against it, I couldn’t help but comply. What he didn’t take into account was the fact that his mother was smart. She knew there was no uncle the minute Angel and I concocted the excuse. But what else could I have said? He just did not, under any circumstances, want her to know the truth.
He said it was because his death had devastated her and he didn’t want her to have to go through that again, but she seemed to handle the prospect of another explanation better than he did. Could there have been something more to Angel’s reluctance? I’d wondered that a lot since she came into my office that day. It had been only two weeks. She wouldn’t be put off for long. I could tell by the determined set of her jaw. She wanted answers. Answers I could give her only if I betrayed Angel.
She finally had enough of waiting and leaned down to peer at me under the table. “I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”
I crinkled my nose, busted beyond belief, then popped up out of Cookie’s lap, wondering in the back of my mind what that would look like. “Oh, hey, Mrs. Garza! I didn’t see you.”
After taking a long moment to fold her arms over her chest, she said, “You sent more money this month.”
“Right, um, your relative’s estate was larger than we’d originally been told.”
“It magically got bigger?” She was such a stunning woman. Even at fifty, she had an amazing body and fantastic hair. Combine that with her thick Spanish accent and her rich, husky voice, and she was what Garrett would call a TKO.
“It did get bigger. Weird, huh?”
“Right,” Cookie said, nodding in agreement. “Totally weird. That was one eccentric aunt you had.”
“Uncle,” I corrected her.
“Uncle. Aunt,” she said, going in for a save. “I think he was a cross-dresser.”
Not bad. Not bad.
Mrs. Garza slid into the booth with us. “I’m not here to cause problems, Ms. Davidson.”
This was not going to end well. “Call me Charley,” I said. “And this is my assistant, Cookie.”
She blinked at her. “Your name is Cookie?” she asked her. No one had ever questioned that, but she was right. It was an odd name. And yet it fit her so perfectly.
“Sure is.” She held out a hand, and Mrs. Garza shook it.
“I am Evangeline.”
“Oh, we know,” Cookie said. “We make out a check to you every —”
“So,” I said, interrupting her before she said too much, “what brings you to our neck of the woods?”
“You. This money. This tío de tu imaginación.”
Well that was uncalled for. “I have a couple of imaginary friends,” I said, correcting her, “but my uncle is very real.”
“No, my uncle,” she said.
“Does your uncle know you think he’s imaginary?”
Just when I thought she might grow frustrated enough to storm out of the room, she stopped and implored me. “I just have some questions. For him. For Angel,” she said, pronouncing it Ahn-hell.
“I don’t know anyone named Ahn-hell.”
Cookie shook her head, too, completely baffled. She was getting really good at this stuff. Of course, she was not lying. She’d never seen the little punk, though I’d described him to her on several occasions. Every time, a starstruck expression would come over her face. She liked the kid. So did I. Usually.
Evangeline held up hand. “Spare me. I know who you are. I know what you can do.”
I kept waiting for the subject of our conversation to pop in. He always seemed to sense what his mother was up to. While I wanted to tell her, to let her know what a great kid she had and how well he was doing, Angel was so vehemently against it, I didn’t know what to do.
“Charley,” she said, leaning in to me, “I insist.”
Maybe if I just explained why I couldn’t tell her. Then again, that would be confirming her suspicions, but I had a feeling she was like a pit bull with a stuffed Elmo. No way was she giving up until everything was out in the open, polyester guts and all.
There was one place Ahn-hell wasn’t allowed. “Follow me,” I said, scooting out of the booth and leading her to the women’s restroom.
“Is he in here?” she asked, kind of appalled.
“No, that’s why we are. He is no longer allowed in the women’s restroom.”
She stilled. I’d just confirmed all her suspicions. All her hopes. Who wouldn’t want to be able to talk to a lost child? I couldn’t imagine what she went through when Angel died. He told me she was devastated. Understandably so. But the thought of the agony she’d suffered tightened around my chest as I watched her face. Every emotion known to mankind flashed across it.
“So, what everyone says about you is true.”
“I wouldn’
t go that far. That whole chess-team thing was a big misunderstanding.”
I didn’t amuse her. She was lost in her thoughts. In her hopes and, deep down, her dread. “You can speak with the dead.”
“I can, but only when they want me to, for the most part. Evangeline,” I said, knowing I was going to regret everything I was about to say. Angel was going to kill me. “He doesn’t want you to know he’s… he’s still with us.”
A hand with impeccably finished nails covered her mouth. She leaned against the counter, clearly afraid her legs would give. I let her absorb, mull, and otherwise process everything she was going through. After a long while, she said, “Why —?” Her voice hitched. She swallowed and started again. “Why doesn’t he want me to know about him?”
“He’s afraid you will mourn all over again.”
“All over again? I’ve never stopped.” After a moment, she asked, “Is he well?”
I bit down, not wanting to give her any more information than I absolutely had to. “Yes, he is. But like I said, he is vehemently against me telling you any of this. If he finds out, he will be very angry with me.”
Her chin rose. “It’s my right, Ms. Davidson. I have more of a right to know about him than you do.”
“No, I agree. It’s not me, Evangeline. I don’t know why he —”
Before I could finish, a young male voice filtered toward me, its tone even, calculating. “You did not just do what I think you did.”
He appeared across from me by the women’s stalls. I didn’t know what to say. If I spoke to him, she’d know he was there. He rushed toward me, absolutely livid, and literally wrapped a hand around my throat, pushing me back against the wall. The paper towel dispenser bit into my back on impact, but I let him be angry with me. He had a right. I’d promised him. I’d promised him I wouldn’t say anything. Ever.
“You did not tell her about me.”
Evangeline said something, but it was drowned out by the blood rushing in my ears. He was furious, uncontrollably so.
I felt Reyes, but he didn’t appear with his raging anger like I was worried he would. He revealed himself slowly, methodically.
Dangerously.
I had no idea what he could do to Angel, nor did I want to find out.
Placing my hand on the one he had wrapped around my throat, I spoke softly to Angel, soothingly. “Sweetheart, I know you’re angry. But she figured it out on her own, hon. Just like I told you she would.”
Reyes moved closer and I raised a hand, silently begging him not to hurt Angel.
Angel sensed him. He glanced to the side, applied one last ounce of pressure to my throat, then pushed off me, turning and letting his anger consume him.
“I’m okay,” I said to appease Reyes, but he stayed put right where he was, hovering incorporeally close by.
Evangeline looked on, a slight rush of terror surging inside her.
I held on to my throat and shook my head at her. “I’m okay. I just swallowed wrong.”
“Please stop lying to me, Ms. Davidson.”
Lowering my head, I took several deep, calming breaths, then focused on Angel. He had never, in all the years we’d been together, raised a hand against me. He’d never even come close.
The cat was out of the bag and I was no longer going to pretend otherwise. I would take full responsibility, but I would not be treated that way. “Why are you so against this?” I asked him. “What the hell, Angel?”
“My Ahn-hell?” Evangeline asked, hope sparkling in her eyes. “Is he here?”
“Tell her no,” he said, glowering at me. “Tell her he’s not here. He’s never been here.”
“I won’t do that. She already knows.” I stepped to him. “She’s smart, hon, just like you told me.”
“Too smart,” he said, working his jaw in resentment. “She’ll figure it out.”
“That you’re here?” I put a hand on his shoulder as Evangeline held both of hers to her heart.
The glare he cast me was so toxic, so full of vehemence, my lungs seized under the weight of it. “That I’m not her son.”
It was my turn to be surprised. He’d knocked the wind right out of my sails with that statement. I stood unmoving, trying to absorb what he’d said. Trying to figure it out. “What are you talking about?” I asked him at last. “Then just who are you?”
I felt it the minute the thought came to his head. He was going to disappear on me. I could just summon him back, but he was not getting away that easily. I grabbed his arm before he could go.
He tried to pull out of my grip, but I held fast and asked, “What are you talking about?”
He suddenly seemed embarrassed, as though he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It took him a long time to talk, but I waited, rather impatiently, refusing to let him off the hook.
“My middle name is Angel. Her son’s first name was Angel, and we both had the same last name: Garza. We took that as a sign that we were supposed to be brothers. I loved him more than anyone. I lived at the home with all the other outcasts.” When he looked at me, the pain in his eyes swallowed me whole. “With all the other kids whose parents didn’t want them. Mrs. Garza was always so nice to me. We’d pretend that she was my mom, too. I loved being at his house. I loved that she looked at me like I was any other kid. Not like a kid from the home.” He turned away again. “How do you think she would look at me if she knew I was the kid who killed her son?”
Despite my determination to hold my reactions at bay, I gasped. Evangeline wanted to ask me what was happening, but she knew enough to keep quiet for the moment.
“Angel, what happened that night?”
He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “We got in a fight with a group of neighborhood kids over some ice cream bars. Angel, the other Angel, wanted to scare them. He stole his mom’s car and the gun she had under her mattress and we went looking for them. I drove. I was a better driver than he was. When we found them, he started shooting, but there were kids there. Little kids. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t. Or maybe he didn’t hear me. He wasn’t really trying to hit them. He just wanted to scare them, but I was worried he would accidentally shoot a kid. So I wrecked the car on purpose.”
I stepped to him and touched the wound on his chest. “This is a gunshot wound,” I said, trying to understand. He’d told me years ago they’d struggled for the gun and it went off. He never told me the other kid died as well. He’d definitely never told me he was the other kid.
“No. I flew out of the car and landed on something sharp, like rebar. But Angel died, too. I didn’t think it would be that bad. I just thought the crash would bruise us up or something. But I killed us both. I killed my brother.”
“Is he still here, like you?”
“No. Angel crossed the minute he died. Went straight to heaven. I watched him go, and I figured I’d go to hell for killing him, but I never did. I was just there. I was so lost and alone until you came along.”
I covered my mouth with a shaking hand. “Angel.”
“And then I thought I could make it up to his mom. I figured, when you offered me a job, that I could help her out.”
“So, all the aunts and uncles and cousins you tell me about?”
“They were his. Not mine. I never had anyone. I just wanted to make it up to her. To all of them.”
My heart broke into a million tiny pieces. He died trying to do the right thing, and the guilt had been eating him alive all this time. “What is your real first name?”
“Juan. Juanito Ahn-hell Garza. Angel.”
I pulled him into my arms. He didn’t want me to. He didn’t want my forgiveness. But after a moment, he broke down and cried into my hair, his shoulders shaking softly.
Together, we told Evangeline the truth.
“Your son is in heaven, where he should be,” I told her, worried she would resent my making such a bold statement when she’d only wanted to talk to him.
But she didn’t take the slightest bit
of offense. Her face brightened after a moment. “Please tell him that I never blamed him. I knew my son, Juanito,” she said, her eyes bright with emotion. “Don’t you ever feel like that was your fault. We know what you did. We know you were trying to do the right thing.”
Angel put a hand over his eyes.
“Angel?” I said. “Is there anything you want to say to her?”
“I always wished she was my mom.”
I delivered the message to a tearful and overjoyed acceptance. “And I always wished you were my son,” she said.
If ever there was a time I wished a departed could touch the living, it was now. They both could use a hug. I did the next best thing and pulled them both into my arms.
“I came here for a reason,” Angel said after Evangeline left.
Even after everything, I got the impression he was still embarrassed. “Do you still want me to call you Angel?” I asked.
He nodded. “I was going by Angel, too, before I died.”
“Okay. Why did you come here?”
“I found that Marika chick and her kid. They’re at the Target on Lomas and Eubank buying diapers.”
“Oh.” I looked at my watch. “Okay, are they still there?”
“Yeah. They just got there a few minutes ago. She had some errands to run.”
The departed didn’t always have a good sense of time, so I hoped he was right.
I put a hand on his cheek. “I am so proud of you.”
He shifted away from me, uncomfortable. “Why would you be? I told you, I killed my best friend. And I lied to you for years.”
“You did not kill him, Angel. It was an accident that occurred when you were trying to do the right thing, if you’ll remember. I’m proud of you whether you want me to be or not.”
“Then can I see you naked now?”
“Why would I let you see me naked now?”
“Because I’m hurting inside.”
I barked out a laugh. “You’re going to be hurting a lot worse when I’m done with you.”