The Witch On Twisted Oak

by Muller, Susan C.

  That much was true. She wasn’t anybody he’d dare introduce to Mamacita. He’d only known her a couple of weeks and he was sure of that. Maybe murder would be a safer subject. “I need to find out about the lady who was killed. What can you tell me about her?”

  “I don’t know what you expect me to say. I knew the Villarreal’s had rented the apartment, but I never met the woman. I tried to, several times, but she always managed to avoid me. So I let it go.”

  “She lived here for a month and you never met her?” That wasn’t like Mamacita. If a pinecone fell on the street, she knew about it. A new neighbor? She’d have been over there until she knew the woman’s life story.

  “What about visitors, clients? You had to have seen if people came in and out.”

  “No, I didn’t notice.” Mamacita wouldn’t look him in the eyes.

  “Did cars stop? They might have parked in front of the house.”

  Mamacita turned her back and wiped the already spotless countertop. “Is this the way you speak to your mother? I taught you better manners than this.”

  She knew something she wasn’t telling him, and he’d never get it out of her until she decided it was time. For now, he’d interview the other neighbors; see if one of them was willing to talk.

  And contact Vincente and Emily. Find out if they had noticed a change in Mamacita over the last few weeks.

  The gray sky matched Ruben’s mood as he stood on Mamacita’s porch and watched the techies in their paper jump suits dodge Halloween decorations to fill the CSU van with things he didn’t want to know about. Adam scurried around, organizing teams to interview the neighbors before everyone left for work.

  His conscience pricked at him for not doing enough to help, but he had to figure out what was going on with Mamacita. Not for one minute did he believe she didn’t know who the dead woman was and all the significant details about her life.

  One side of his brain wondered when she had started looking so old and feeble. The other side chewed on the fact that she was keeping information from him. Any other witness, any stranger, and he’d have had the information twenty minutes ago.

  Adam mounted the steps and stood beside him. At six-two and with the shoulders of a prizefighter, Adam was a big man, but he was dwarfed next to him.

  “What’s the story?” Adam asked, frowning. “She didn’t want to talk to me—kept changing the subject. I held off, thinking she’d be more comfortable with you.”

  “She doesn’t know anything. Never met the woman.” Lying to his partner made Ruben’s stomach knot. It was a sin right up there with falsifying evidence or roughing up a suspect, but Mamacita claimed she didn’t know the victim, and until he found out different, he wouldn’t contradict her.

  Adam cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. Finally, he pushed his glasses up on his nose and shrugged. “I had hopes, but if she doesn’t, she doesn’t. Let’s go talk to Molly’s owners. They have a good view of the garage. Maybe they saw something. If they’ll talk to us. You didn’t break any of their windows or defile their daughters, did you?”

  A chill ran down his spine. But that had been the Herrera’s. The Watsons lived here now. He growled and started across the street, leaving Adam in his wake, chuckling.

  Wayne Watson sat forward with his elbows on his knees, but his wife, Rita, leaned back against the sofa, her arms folded across her chest.

  This wasn’t going to be an easy interview.

  “I can’t sit here and talk to you now. I need to be with my kids. Elissa was terrified.” Rita Watson’s voice was clipped, angry.

  “Detective Chaffee has taken Elissa and Bobby over to my mother’s house. She’s fixing them hot chocolate. When I saw them a few minutes ago, your daughter was asking for mini-marshmallows and you son wondered if there were any cookies.”

  “You mean that huge woman with the bleached blond crew cut? She’d frighten a grown man. Elissa will be traumatized.”

  Ruben chuckled softly. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Detective Chaffee, Tenequa, is a miracle worker with frightened children. We call her The Kid Whisperer.”

  They also called her Tenequa the Terrible, but that was only if you got on her wrong side. How she could fill the squad room with language so blue it would make a longshoreman blush, then turn it off and be so comforting to a nervous witness was beyond him.

  Right now, Ruben didn’t care what Tenequa was called. He was just glad their boss, Hard Luck Luchak, had sent her and her partner to help work the case. Hard Luck could be a hard ass at times, but he always came around when one of his men was in trouble.

  Ruben straightened himself in the overstuffed chair. “I need you to tell me everything you know about the woman who was killed. Don’t worry about what’s important and what’s not. Detective Campbell and I will figure that out later.”

  Venom dripped from Rita’s voice. “You’re not supposed to operate a business from your house in this neighborhood, you know. I told Wayne that. I wanted him to go across the street and complain, but he wouldn’t do it.”

  Poor Wayne. His life was about to become hell. If it wasn’t already.

  “Who were her clients? People from the neighborhood?”

  Wayne tried to answer, but she talked over him. As if he wasn’t there. “Maybe some of them. But most of them drove. Elissa was scared to go outside sometimes, but Bobby was curious. I told him to stay away, that she wasn’t anyone he needed to bother with.”

  Okay, he definitely needed to talk to Bobby. It was possible that Bobby was a brainwashed Momma’s boy, but if the kid was anything like he’d been at that age, if Mamacita said stay away, that’s exactly where he wanted to be.

  Wayne finally managed to speak up. “There weren’t that many cars. A couple a day. But one guy came almost every day. He had a big, black car. Not a limo, but expensive looking. Maybe a Lincoln. He rode in the back and his driver waited for him in the car.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. “Can you describe him?”

  Wayne sighed and rolled his eyes up as if trying to form a picture in his mind. “He wasn’t tall, just average, but he had these real broad shoulders. A little on the heavy side. He always wore a black suit. At least the times I saw him.”

  “Yeah,” Rita agreed. “He always wore a black suit and a loud tie. He walked funny. Not exactly a limp, more like he rolled from side-to-side.”

  Adam tapped his spiral with the tip of his pen. “Was he white, black, Hispanic?”

  “Er, umm, H-Hispanic,” Rita stuttered and blushed as if identifying the guy as Hispanic in front of Ruben wasn’t PC.

  Ruben speed-walked across the street, up Mamacita’s stairs, and through the front door. The screen slammed behind him and Adam had to pull it open again.

  Voices floated in from the kitchen and the aroma of baking cookies hung in the air. A child giggled and Ruben relaxed.

  Tenequa had done her magic again.

  “Slow down, partner.” Adam put his hand on Ruben’s arm. Something not many men dared to do. “This isn’t a sprint. Odds are, we won’t catch this guy today.”

  Ruben gritted his teeth. “Someone came into my neighborhood and committed a gruesome murder not twenty feet from where my mother was sleeping. This is personal.”

  “True, but we need to go easy, not scare the kid. Do you want me to talk to him?”

  “No, I can handle it.” Adam was right. He needed to take it down a notch. “You take the girl, I’ll take the boy. And stall getting her across the street. Give me as much time as you can.”

  They stepped through the kitchen door as Mamacita helped Elissa pull the next batch of cookies from the oven. If the house had smelled like chocolate chip goodness before, the aroma now filled every corner.

  Ruben forced himself to hang back and let Adam take over.

  “Hey, guys, looks like you’ve been busy.” By himself, Adam could appear threatening. Next to Ruben and Tenequa, he resembled a teddy bear. “I’m Detective Campbell, A
dam. I need to take you home.”

  Elissa looked around, her eyes big. “What about my cookies?”

  “Did you bake those? Wow, I am impressed. Why don’t you come with me and Bobby can wait here while they cool. Then Mamacita can pack them up and send them home with him. I know your mama is waiting to get you cleaned up so you can all go to your grandmother’s.”

  Elissa glanced down at her stained pajamas and her lip trembled.

  “The truth is, I wanted to meet you. I’ve never met a little girl as young as you who was so brave. Did you know the woman who was hurt? I’ll bet you could see her house from your window.” Adam put his hand on her shoulder and they started out the door.

  Rubin lifted one of the cookies cooling on the counter. He took a bite, and the chocolate chips, still warm and soft, pulled into a long string that broke, coating his lips with chocolate.

  His eyes widened at the sight of Mamacita, still in her gown and with dark circles under her eyes. “Why don’t you take a few minutes to get dressed? Tenequa and I will get these cookies boxed up and take Bobby home. We’ll even clean up the kitchen.”

  Mamacita rolled her eyes and snorted. She’d just come in and re-clean whatever they had done, but he had to at least try.

  She reached under the counter and hauled out a cookie tin decorated with snowmen. “Make sure they have time to cool,” she said, as she shuffled toward her room.

  Tenequa filled the sink with hot water and soap. She swept spoons and measuring cups and spatulas into the suds, keeping her back to Ruben and Bobby.

  “What about you, Bobby?” Ruben asked, still holding half a cookie. “Did you help with the baking?”

  The boy fidgeted with the box of waxed paper, never raising his eyes. “Nah, I mostly just ate them.”

  “Yeah, that was my specialty, too.” Ruben popped the last bite into his mouth. “Your mother said you weren’t allowed to go next door where the lady was killed. I don’t know about you”—Ruben lowered his voice and glanced toward Mamacita’s room—“but when I was your age, if my mother said I couldn’t go somewhere, that’s the first place I went when she wasn’t looking.”

  Bobby chuckled, then shot a guilty glance at the door to Mamacita’s room.

  Got him. Now the only worry was that he’d make up something to prove how tough he was in front of two detectives.

  Bobby lowered his voice so that Ruben had to lean forward to hear. “Yeah, I went over there a couple of times. Sister Yolanda was pretty nice, I guess. She told me I should go home, but she didn’t really try to make me.”

  His voice rose to normal levels and Ruben sat on a kitchen stool and pulled out his pocket spiral.

  “Her house was way cool. She had these like rugs hanging from the ceiling that divided up the room. And then like beads for a doorway. And it smelled funny. Not bad funny, just different. Not like food or anything. She was always burning these sticks. She called it incense. I thought that meant you were angry.”

  Ruben smiled and made meaningless scratches on his pad, waiting for the boy to tell him something he didn’t already know.

  “She had a crystal ball, and it was neat looking, but she said she liked to use the cards better. They weren’t like the regular cards my dad plays poker with sometimes.”

  The boy drew in a sharp breath and stopped abruptly. He stared at Ruben with pleading eyes. Probably afraid Ruben would arrest his dad over a monthly poker game.

  “Sure, Tarot cards. They’re different from poker cards. I don’t know that much about them.”

  “They have these really cool pictures, almost like art, of knights on horses and things like that. The thing is, the pictures don’t always mean what you think they do. And even when you try to learn them, they turn around and mean something else because of where they are when you turn them over.”

  “Did she ever tell your fortune?”

  “I asked her lots of times, but she said it wasn’t good for a kid my age. I might try to change my life because of what she said.”

  Where had he heard that line before? Probably some movie. That old one with Demi Moore and that dancie guy who died. Who was the fake medium? Whoopi Goldberg. But the kid had slipped up. He’d said he asked lots of times.

  “So you went over there several times. Did you ever see any of her clients?”

  “A few. That butcher guy from the market? He was worried his wife was having an affair. She told him his wife would have to come in to be read for her to know for sure. He said if she was having an affair, she wasn’t too likely to come in, was she? He was kind a mad when he left. Do you think he did it?”

  A butcher sure could account for all the blood and dismembering. Could it be that easy? “Not likely, kid. We’ve just started looking. Was there anyone else?”

  “Ladies wanting love advice. I don’t know who they were. They would come, two or three together, like it was a party. They would giggle and laugh. I don’t think they took it seriously.”

  “Was there a man that came most days?”

  “She called him El Jefe. But she said it sort of sarcastic, like he thought he was hot shit, but she didn’t think much of him.” Bobby shot a glance at Ruben as if waiting to see if he’d comment on his language. Ruben stifled a laugh and let him continue.

  “She wouldn’t let me be there when he came. Said he was trouble and I should stay away. I watched him a couple of times. He was a big guy. Not like you. Wide, almost a square. And he walked funny. Like he was on a ship or something. He had black hair and wore these ugly ties.”

  “What about the car?” This was the kind of stuff he needed.

  “A black Lincoln Continental. The driver stayed in the car, but rolled his window down so he could smoke. He’d put it out real quick when El Jefe came back. He played that Latin kind of music real loud while he waited. My mother didn’t like that. I never saw his hair. He might have been bald; an old dude.”

  A grin crept over Ruben’s face. He knew the kid would be his best bet. “Good job. Can you think of anything else that might be helpful?” He didn’t have long. He had to get the kid back home before his mother came looking for him.

  Bobby scuffed his foot and looked at the floor. “I don’t think she liked your mother very much.”

  Chapter 3

  Sunday afternoon meant the office was quiet, but not empty. The Texans were playing at two o’clock and Ruben spotted Remy Steinberg with his season tickets stuck in the hatband of his Stetson like an old time news reporter.

  Remy was a small man. He claimed five-nine, but that would only be with his boots on. Jewish on his father’s side, and Cajun on his mother’s, he wore full cowboy regalia most likely to hide the fact that he’d been born in New Jersey.

  “If it isn’t the Dynamic Duo.” Remy glanced at Ruben and Adam as they wove their way between desks. “I heard you caught one a little too close to home this morning.”

  “Thought I might see you there. Tenequa and Two Times Tommy were on the scene.” Ruben reached his desk and sank into his chair. Remy was a good detective and he wouldn’t have minded his help.

  “It’s my weekend off, but that’s never stopped ‘em before. Probably saving me for something really big. Hope you didn’t let Tommy interview any witnesses. He’d still be there.”

  “I don’t know, sometimes people blurt out things just to shut him up. You on your way to the game?”

  “Yup.” Remy switched off his computer. “Just stopped by to send a copy of a report to Hard Luck. I wanted it on his desk when he comes in tomorrow.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Kickoff is in thirty-seven minutes and my date is waiting in the car. Bye, suckers, have a fun Sunday.”

  Ruben booted up his computer and started on the paperwork. As senior partner and first on the scene, Adam should have had the lead. But that was just a technicality—this was Ruben’s case. He knew it and so did Adam. Just let Hard Luck try to take it away from him.

  If five minutes passed or twenty-five, he didn’t
know, but Adam passed him a printout so fresh he could smell the ink. The paper was warm in his hands.

  “We’ve got a name. Yolanda Guadalupe Garza, the same one she used to rent the apartment. She’s forty-eight. Has a record here as a con artist, public intoxication, and one pop for indecent exposure, but that was all twenty something years ago. I have a call in to San Antonio. That’s where she’s supposed to have moved from.”

  Ruben was still reading the rap sheet when the incoming bell on the fax machine rang. Adam crossed the room in three steps and grabbed the pages as they rolled off the machine.

  “They know her in San Antonio, picked her up a few times on drunk and disorderly, but let her go, nothing more serious. Even those were ten or more years ago. She must have learned her lesson.”

  Ruben leaned back in his chair. “What about other cities? Austin, Dallas, down in The Valley?”

  “There’s a driver’s license in the name of one of her aliases in Corpus Christie for a couple of years after she left here. But they have a solid address in San Antonio, and it looks like she lived there for at least fifteen years. Don’t know where she went or what name she used between Corpus and San Antonio.”

  “Any next of kin?” Now they were getting somewhere.

  Adam shuffled the pages. “A sister in San Antonio.”

  “I’d sure like to talk to her, but I doubt Hard Luck’s going to authorize driving two hundred miles for a notification.” Fucking budget.

  “We could do it over the phone.”

  “Kind of cold.” But he thought how close that converted garage was to Mamacita’s bedroom and didn’t care.

  “Do you want to handle it or shall I?” Adam took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “I’d better do it. You never know.” With a name like Garza, who knew how good her English was? Adam’s Spanish was passable, but not fluent. And a death notification called for finesse, especially if he wanted to pump the sister gently for information.