“Wait,” the junior officer said. “He’s gotta sign her out!”
Vicente held out a crisp fifty dollar bill, nearly half of what junior made in on month. The young officer snatched it before it fell to the ground.
When he climbed into the car waiting behind the jail, Anna stared straight at the divider between them and the driver. Vicente inventoried the blood on her clothes, the short hair and the shaking hands that she clenched into a tight ball in her lap.
Rubbing his stinging cheek, he rapped his knuckles on the roof and they pulled away from the curb. Even though he’d spent days twisting his guts into knots over her, he didn’t know what to do with her now that she sat beside him.
“What happened?” he asked.
She didn't so much as blink.
Impatient for an answer he almost asked again when Anna quietly said, “They drove us into a ditch.”
He couldn’t talk as the Cadillac slid under the palm trees lining Broadway. “That’s how you got the shiner?”
Still not looking at him, she shook her head. “After. They said they'd take Michael to the hospital. But they left him in the truck and I don't know if he's alive.”
He looked out the window. "What did they do to you?"
"Nothing when one of the feds said I was your employee."
Campbell. Thinking of how easily he could’ve lost her, he automatically answered, “I'll look for Michael. I'll make sure he's taken care of.”
She finally looked up at him. “Did you tip them off? You saw my place. I'm not a threat to you.”
"The tip didn't come from me," he admitted. "Not directly." He remembered Campbell and Hollner had had followed him to the barrio that night. Campbell was good. He must've shadowed Vicente right up to Anna's door.
Then why did he arrest her only to have Vicente haul her out of jail?
He turned to her and recognized the doll-like mask on her face. The fight had left her. “Drop me off here,” she said.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
She didn't have a purse, and there had been no personal property to collect. Without a corset, or whatever women wore under their clothes, her breasts were loose in her shirt. The car bounced over the road and he looked out the window as his fingers dug into the seat. “You don't have to go back to him.”
"Back to who?"
"Albert."
Anna looked at him like he was crazy, and then she laughed softly. "Albert is gone. He's been gone for years."
The joke was on him. He should've known. He had the contacts to have gotten a full dossier on her, but he'd been blinded by his emotions. "I thought he was behind-"
"I know exactly what you thought. Just drop me off. I'll take of myself."
"With what?"
"I have something set aside."
He couldn't help but ask, "What happened to Albert?"
Anna stared out her window. "He was already married. My mother died before that little secret came out. But my father had to die with the knowledge they'd made me a married man's whore."
Vicente couldn’t resist and moved a hank of her clumsily shorn hair away from her face. "Their mistake doesn't make you a whore."
She blinked, stunned for a moment before she jerked away from his touch. "Those were my father's last words, not mine."
Vicente brought his hand back and rested it on the seat. "You can go back, but they've probably confiscated your operation by now. You're right. I'm responsible for this. I led them to you."
She made no move to punch or kick him. He would've welcomed it more than her blank stare, which took him back to those first days on the beach before she gave him her trust He'd taken that golden gift and flung it far. He was just as guilty as her father and mother. All those years ago, he should've waited under her window and taken her far from them.
She slapped her hand on the window separating them from the driver. “Stop here," she shouted. "I'll check into this hotel."
She’d picked one of those buck-a-night flophouses teeming with streetwalkers and drunks. Vicente decided she wasn’t getting out of this car without him. “No.”
“Get off me!”
He almost grinned at the tone in her voice. “Why? I won’t do anything to you," he said. "Besides, I need to find your boy, right?”
He could see her thinking through her options. Anna nodded her head. "After that, I’m no longer your merchandise.”
“I had to say that in front of them,” he explained, about to touch her shoulder and offer her some comfort. She shrugged in dismissal.
He shook his head, staring at the tips of his shoes. For a moment he was the kid on the beach fumbling to make her notice him. He felt the need to please her again, to earn a piece of a candy and the possibility it could just be the two of them and nothing else. In that brief moment, he remembered what it was like to be a boy in love.
“At least enjoy my penthouse until you can show your face back home.”
She swung around, fire glittering in her good eye. He was showing off again and she wasn't buying it. They turned off 5th Avenue onto Broadway and pulled up to the hotel.
Sighing, he stepped out of the car. Vicente was aware of the doormen waiting and his driver looking up in surprise to see him holding the door open. Finally her slim ankle appeared, and then she firmly planted her mud-caked shoe on the ground. He offered his hand, but she deliberately stood up without his help.
“I want my own room,” she said. With her torn clothes and banged-up face, Anna walked like the queen through the doors into the lobby.
"He was married all that time?" Dori asked. "What a disgusting piece of filth!"
Anna and the hotel vanished. Vicente was back in Dori's bedroom, but he could still feel her hair on his fingers.
He wanted to stay in that memory and live every second of it again. Every time he came back to the present, he had this feeling that somehow he could take over his old self and do everything different. If he could go back to that first night in her basement, he would've gotten on his knees, wrapped both arms around her legs and never let her go. He should've held her, kissed her, told her how much he loved her.
He sat there helpless as the chances he'd once had slipped away so long ago.
He heard Dori ask, "What happened to that boy who worked for her?"
"He was dead," he said, looking up at her.
Morning was coming with its gray light. "Who was he? The boy named Michael."
"Some kid whose mother took Anna in when her father died and Albert couldn't marry her."
"And so Anna started bootlegging to support herself," Dori said as if she wanted to go back in time and shake her hand.
Pride in his Anna, with her pluck and pugnacious nature, swelled in his chest. "She took over Old Man Riley's still."
"Was her stuff any good?"
"The booze? No. It was some of the worst I ever tasted," he said, laughing. "I don't know how she made any money off it."
"Did you ever tell her that?"
"There was no time. But if I had, she would've hit me."
"Wait!" Dori jumped up and messed around with the stuff on the table by her bed. "When was she arrested? Do you know the date?"
"Why do you need to know that stuff?"
"I can look it up in the old records, and if there's an address I can find her through property records."
"If she was smart, she wouldn't have used her real address. She also wouldn't have had a record because I paid enough to make sure she wouldn't."
From the look on Dori's face, he'd offended her principles. He could feel himself fading. "But it's worth a try," he said in an attempt to reassure her.
"What if it doesn't work?" she asked. "What if I find that something terrible happened to her?"
"You'll tell me the truth."
"I know that. But what will you do?"
Her voice traveled across a long distance. He hoped she saw him smile as he was swallowed into the light.
Chapter Tw
enty Four
Dori hesitated at the top of the stairs leading to the Local History Room. As she got dressed this morning, she realized she had no idea where Meg lived. All this time, it had been about her and her secrets.
She sighed, ashamed of her selfishness.
Maybe she should've texted or emailed Meg to get a sense of what she might come up against. Dori put on her cop face and took a few steps and then shook her head. Meg didn't deserve the cop face.
She took in a deep breath and tried to relax, but the longer she stood there, the more ridiculous she felt.
When Dori walked in, Meg remained focused on her work. "I was wondering how long it would take you to cross the threshold."
"Do you have a minute?"
Meg looked across the empty history room. She wore white gloves, carefully handling a collection of tiny bottles in a cracked leather case.
Dori managed a weak smile as she walked over to the desk and then set the bag of tea she'd picked up Halcyon. "What's this?" Meg asked.
"I'm sorry about what happened last night-" She cleared her throat. "With Gavin on the floor and everything."
"Oh. Well. Hmmm."
Dori didn't know whether to sit down and have it out, or run like hell.
"You don't owe me an apology," Meg finally said.
"But I was-" Dori stopped herself from saying, on top of him. She frantically searched for the right way to say it. "It wasn't like that. I pushed him out of the way. The ceiling came down and- I'm sorry. I'm not the kind of woman who goes after another woman's man."
"But you knew we were going out that night."
She took in a deep breath. "I did."
"And I made sure you weren't dating him."
Dori nodded her head. A high-pitched whine erupted in her ears.
"I appreciate the tea by the way," Meg said, pulling off her gloves. "But I don't think I can accept it. You haven’t been completely honest with me from the very beginning."
"It's hard to tell a complete stranger that you have a ghost in your house."
Meg flinched at the word, stranger. "I don't mean that. I mean this whole charade about Anna Vazquez as your great grandmother. Your Grammy didn’t know her name. You've backpedaled and you never told me about your past with Gavin."
Dori's mouth went dry.
"He told me last night," Meg said.
"Oh."
"I don't think he-" Meg paused and crossed her arms over her chest. "I've had enough dishonesty in my life. I can't have friendships with people who only tell me half the story."
Thinking of the married man Meg had upended her life to be with, Dori withered under her piercing stare.
"Thank you for the tea and um, well I-" Meg paused to search for the polite way to tell her to get the hell out.
"I understand and I-," Dori managed, grabbing the bag of tea and hurrying the long length of the room to the door before she made a bigger fool of herself.
She raced down the stairs, humiliated to think she could patch things up with a stupid bag of tea. She'd been selfish; caught up in all her issues that she walked into one wall after another. The bag exploded when she dumped it into the trash can by the door. Instead of stopping to pick up the leaves, she kept on walking.
The crew was ending their lunch break. Dori ended the call with the San Diego Police Museum. Even though Vicente hadn't told her the date of Anna's arrest, she could search between April and December 1932. For the past few days, she'd thrown herself into research, hunting down Eugenia Sorolla. She'd come up with women who weren't in National City during in the 1930's. Vicente hadn't told her Alex's last name.
The breeze swept in through the back door that she'd propped open. Gavin was due to come by to get her started on stripping paint in the hallway. She walked though the house to stretch her legs and ease the nerves in her stomach.
"Are you around?" she called out, her ears straining for some sign of Vicente. A car drove by. Two crows squawked at one another. The floor board under her weight cracked.
Even though now wasn't the best time for him to show up, she was dying to know what happened once he and Anna walked into the hotel. She wished she had the courage to return to The US Grant and see the lobby, or talk her way into the Penthouse suite.
Instead, Dori heated up water for a cup of tea that she really didn't want as Gavin's truck pulled up the drive. Her stomach shriveled into a tight ball of dread. He shut the door to his truck, talking to someone on his cell phone.
She wiped her palms down the front of her jeans, about to open the front door so he could walk in. But then he might think she was waiting for him, which she was, but not in the way one might suppose. Dori couldn't get the idea of Gavin telling Meg about their past. Had they talked over the phone or in a cozy, candlelit corner? Did they make up or was it over before it started?
Before she got caught up in that train of thought, she opened the door. Gavin stood on the porch, negotiating plumbing supplies. She held up her hand in greeting, he jerked his chin up and then asked the person on the phone about fittings.
With all of his guys working in the basement, she'd technically be alone with him. If she were 17 again, that would've been plenty of time to get what she'd wanted and then send him out the door with a grin on his face.
The microwave beeped at her. She took her cup out and then set it on the counter.
"You ready to get started?" Gavin asked, startling her.
Her face burned. "What?"
"The front room." He pointed up. "Your ceiling."
"Oh but they already cleaned it up." The crew had swept away the rubble that day she'd seen Meg. She shuddered at the raw memory.
"I thought I was stripping paint today."
"I thought you'd want to repair the big gaping hole in your ceiling."
"I can live with it for now."
His glance told her that he highly doubted it. "It's your house."
She waited for him to bring up Meg or Vicente, or that she'd dumped him in high school. But he had other things on his mind. "It would only take maybe three or four days to tear it all down and then re-plaster," he said.
"It's never just three or four days."
He lifted a shoulder. "It's not like you don't have other rooms to work on."
"Exactly."
He eyed the cup on the counter, playing with his ball cap. "You going to make your tea?"
"No, it's okay. I can reheat it later."
They walked to the hallway in relatively comfortable silence. At least they were both pretending to be comfortable.
"Wow, you look like you're prepped for surgery," he said, bending down to pick up a paint scraper. He walked over to the front corner of the hallway across from the front parlor.
"Can I start there instead?" she said, pointing to the far end of the hallway.
He looked around and realized they stood across from the front parlor. He then nodded in understanding and picked up a paint can. "Anything else happen since last night?" He started carrying it down the hall.
"No." She bent down to pick up some of the tools. As she straightened up, she caught a glimpse of movement in the front parlor. The memory of Vicente bleeding out on the rug flashed before her eyes. Dori blinked and it went away. But the chills lingered on her bare arms.
Gavin cleared his throat. "Well, that's good. I was kinda worried to be honest."
She wished he hadn't said that. "I'm good at taking care of myself."
"Let's start here in the corner and see what we've got," he said. He lightly scraped off paint only to reveal a layer of pink then blue and then a miasmic white.
"You don't secretly think I'm crazy, do you?" she asked.
He scrapped some more at the white and then gave up with a sigh. "I was hoping it wouldn't come to this."
Dori jerked back. Gavin looked over his shoulder. "You have milk paint."
She stared at him with no idea how milk paint was relevant to her question.
"You ever use a heat gu
n to remove paint?" he asked.
"Not yet." Dori looked at walls she had to scrape, zap and sand. Suddenly arson seemed like a perfectly viable option.
"And no, I don't think you're crazy. I saw that guy in your window myself, and then I was here with all that going on. The thing I want to know is how do you sleep here alone? It's not like you can shoot things like that."
She was going to get a headache at the pace with which Gavin switched subjects. "He doesn't scare me anymore. Plus, he might be afraid I'll sic Grammy's fake psychic on him."
He laughed and shoved the scraper in his back pocket.
"So you believe in-" She couldn't quite use the word ghost and instead said, "-this stuff?"
"Sure. It's better than thinking that once it's over it's over."
Dori's phone buzzed in her back pocket.
"You need to take that?"
Dori sent her mom to voicemail. "It's fine."
"So how long do we have you till you go back on duty?"
Had Meg told him about the shooting, too? "Things haven't been decided."
"Were you really hurt?"
Damn it, she wished he hadn't asked. "It was serious but I'm okay."
Her phone rang again. Her mother wasn't giving up. "I need to take this in the other room," she said.
"Bad news?"
"It's my mother."
"You sound like my sister."
Dori walked down the hall towards her office. "Hi, Mom."
"Where are you?" Brenda shouted.
She held the phone away from her ear. "I'm at home."
"What are you doing there?"
"Tell me what's going on. Are you hurt?"
"Don't you care anymore?" Brenda demanded. "You sound like I'm bothering you."
She sank into her chair while her mother raged. When Brenda finally wore herself out, Dori cleared her throat. "I still don't understand what the problem is. Tell me."
Brenda sighed. "It's your grandfather's anniversary. Your brother got a frantic call from your grammy to take her the cemetery today because you didn't show up."
Her chest went cold and tight. Grampy's anniversary was next Thursday, not this Thursday. Grammy would've reminded her.
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