The Gamble and the Grave (Veronica Barry Book 4)

by Sophia Martin

  Veronica shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. This all sounds very hard. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you.”

  “I appreciate your understanding,” he said. After a pause, he added, “So. What do you say? Will you take my case?”

  Veronica suddenly felt like Nancy Drew. The Case of the Lost Deed. Was she becoming a private detective? She felt a mingled need to giggle and to hide behind her armchair. Miguel was gazing at her with his melty coffee-black eyes. How could she say no to him? And she thought she probably could get a reading, if she tried. If she touched Hector Santiago, she was bound to see something that could help. Maybe handle some of his things, especially any of his old business papers or maybe the computer where he’d drafted the documents? She had to try.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “That’s great,” he said with a grin. He leaned back and patted the album absently. “I cannot tell you what a relief that is.”

  “Don’t celebrate yet,” Veronica said with a laugh. “I haven’t told you my rates!”

  His grin widened. “Whatever you charge, I’ll pay it.”

  “Man, you might want to reconsider saying that to people you hire,” she said. “And to be honest, I have no idea what to charge you. I’d like to say I’ll do it for free, but I want to pay my boyfriend back for some help he gave me with some bills, and this is the only way I’ll ever be able to do that.”

  Miguel waved a hand. “It always feels strange to charge for a talent. I know, I’m an artist. And people are always expecting you to do stuff for free. Your time is valuable, and so is your gift, Miss Barry. You should charge for it.”

  “I think you should probably start calling me Veronica,” she said.

  “Veronica it is,” he agreed. “I tell you what. Let’s get started, and you can let me know what you decided about the fee tomorrow. Do you have time to come meet my father today?”

  “Sure,” Veronica said. She checked that she had everything in her big schoolwork bag. “We can go now.”

  ~~~

  Veronica followed Miguel in her Civic. He drove an old tomato red Pontiac GTO. Veronica could hear Daniel in her head, raving about the car as she kept her eyes on it ahead of her. She was going to have to introduce him to Miguel, for no other reason than that car.

  Miguel’s studio was in Roseville, to the north, near Folsom Lake. As it turned out, his house wasn’t far from his studio, and it was even closer to the lake. It was one of several homes in the area that Veronica had always admired. The large house, a combination of dark brick and white stucco, stood on a nice, well-tended piece of land, with several old trees and a lake view. There was a blue and white realtor’s sign on the lawn near the road.

  As Veronica exited her car she looked around at the estate and felt a pang of longing. The little yellow two-bedroom she now shared with Daniel was certainly a step up from her old duplex, but this was in another league altogether. She could see how selling the house would mean a significant amount of money for Dolores Santiago, and from what Veronica knew of the cost of care in an assisted living facility, that money would be necessary.

  Miguel waited for her outside the front door. “I’m hoping you can get some impressions just by meeting my father,” he said.

  “I will try,” Veronica said.

  “And I’ll give you a tour of the house, too. Maybe you’ll find the deed just wandering through one of the rooms.”

  “Maybe,” Veronica said, looking up at the façade. The house was three stories, from what she could tell. “This place is amazing,” Veronica said.

  He smiled. “It was my grandparents’ house before my father inherited it. I remember playing here when I was very small. My father grew up here.”

  He opened the door and Veronica entered ahead of him. The interior was all pale beiges and creams. The walls in the entryway were painted very light mocha, and the floors were a pinkish white tile. The large windows Veronica hadn’t really taken in on the outside of the house lit the interior with bright sunlight, and she admired the way the hallway curved and spilled out into an expansive living room carpeted in vanilla yellow. Dual couches upholstered in eggshell linen were strewn with cushions ranging from dark brown, silky olive, light mocha, to pure white. On the walls hung several paintings, one of a herd of wild horses galloping, another of a male ballet dancer throwing a ballerina, and a third of a puppeteer working a marionette in a colorful green and red jester’s costume.

  “Are those all yours?” Veronica asked, though she had already recognized Miguel’s style from her brief encounter with it that summer.

  “Yes,” Miguel said. “My parents have always been very supportive of my art.” They stopped for a moment before the painting of the horses.

  “You always have so much movement in your pieces.”

  “It’s what drives my inspiration,” Miguel agreed. “I am always trying to capture movement in new ways. I like the idea of catching movement in a motionless painting.” He gazed at the horse painting for another moment, then turned to Veronica. “My father is just through there.” On the other side of the living room double French doors opened onto a wide terrace. “I hope he’s having one of his better days, although it’s all relative. A good day isn’t what it used to be. Still, it would be better than a bad day. Sometimes he doesn’t know who I am.” Miguel led Veronica across the room, through the doors.

  An elderly man lay dozing on a lawn chair on the terrace, a newspaper across his chest. Veronica would not have recognized him as the same man from the photo Miguel had shown her. His hair was gray and he had lost most of it on the top of his head. He no longer had a mustache. And he was very thin. His cheeks were sunken, as were his eyes. Miguel crouched down beside him and took his hand. As he woke, he blinked his eyes, and Veronica noted the vagueness behind them.

  Probably not a good day, then.

  She braced herself for him to protest, to demand who Miguel was. But after a moment he smiled and clasped both hands around Miguel’s. His hands were thin and his skin had liver spots, and from the way he held Miguel’s, Veronica thought he must be fairly weak.

  “Miguel�n,” Hector said.

  “Hola, Papa,” Miguel said. “How are you today?”

  Hector patted Miguel’s hand. His mouth worked a bit, but he didn’t answer. Veronica wondered how old he was. Now that he was awake, he didn’t look as old as he had when he was asleep. She thought about the photo in the album. Miguel said it was his parents’ tenth wedding anniversary, and it looked to have been taken in the late 80s. Assuming Hector had been about forty-five in the picture, based on how he looked, that meant he was probably only around seventy now. How sad to have Alzheimer’s destroy your life—at any age, really, but seventy seemed young for it.

  “Papa, I want to introduce you to someone,” Miguel said, and he gestured for Veronica to approach. She crouched down next to him as he helped his father sit up in the chaise. “Papa, this is Veronica Barry. She’s the woman who helped us find Ariana.”

  “Ariana? My baby girl? Where is Ariana?” Hector said, and his began to grind his teeth so hard Veronica could hear it.

  “She’s gone, Papa,” Miguel said, his expression sad. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring her up. Papa, shake Veronica’s hand.”

  Hector frowned and seemed to want to refuse, his eyes searching Miguel’s face and then beyond him. But then his face slowly relaxed. He didn’t move to shake her hand, however. “Papa, you’re meeting Veronica Barry. Shake her hand.” Veronica forced a smile and took the old man’s hand in hers.

  At first, she saw nothing different. Then wisps…

  ~~~

  Hector’s hands, with some of the same liver spots, although not as many, holding a golf club. In his heart there was a feeling of joy—he loved golfing.

  ~~~

  Hector’s right hand, younger still, extended before him. He was wearing a black tuxedo and there was a woman with blonde hair in a blue dress smiling at him. They were at s
ome sort of ball. Hector was thinking how beautiful she looked in blue. She took his hand, and they started toward the dance floor.

  ~~~

  His hands rested on a podium, and his voice rang out from Veronica’s throat. She couldn’t make out the words, however. There was a sense of frustration driving his speech.

  ~~~

  Veronica’s eyes focused back on the present at Hector’s hand slipped from hers. Miguel was watching her and she gave him a subtle shake of the head.

  He sighed. “Papa, I’m going to give Veronica a tour of the house. Do you need anything?”

  Hector rested his head and closed his eyes. “No, Miguel�n,” he murmured. “I’m tired. I’ll just take a little nap, I think.”

  “Okay, then,” Miguel said, and he stood up. Veronica did the same.

  Hector’s eyes fluttered open. “Miguel, where is Ariana? Did she come home last night?”

  “No, Papa. I’m sorry,” Miguel said. Hector began to try to hoist himself up from the chair. Miguel leaned over and gently stopped him, his hands on his father’s shoulders. “Ariana is gone, Papa. I’m sorry. She died two years ago.”

  Hector allowed himself to sink back into the chaise. “Died,” he echoed softly. Veronica saw tears come to his eyes.

  Miguel gave his father a kiss on the forehead, then led Veronica back through the French doors.

  “He never remembers that anymore,” Miguel said quietly. “The other day he got very upset because he thought Ariana had taken his old Mercedes convertible. That car got totaled ten years ago.” Miguel cracked a sad half-grin. “She was too young to drive it then. But somehow it all gets mixed up in his head.”

  “Do you ever think about lying to him?” Veronica asked. “It just seems so hard, for him to have to hear that she’s dead, like it’s for the first time…”

  Miguel nodded. “I’ve done that once or twice. But I think on some level, he knows it’s a lie, and he always gets upset. I mean, he’ll get upset because he thinks she’s hiding from him, you know, that she’s run away again, or something. But I think what’s really going on is he does remember, deep down. So now I tell him the truth. It makes him sad, but you saw. He doesn’t really get agitated about it.”

  “Was this a good day?” Veronica asked.

  Miguel nodded again, his face grim. “Yes, actually. And I got him to take a shower yesterday, too. I mean, I had to help him through it all. But it was a victory, let me tell you, because it had been a while.”

  Veronica didn’t know what to say. It sounded awful.

  Miguel smiled at her. “Don’t look so sad. I mean, it sucks, but that’s just the way things are now. I have a support group I go to. Compared to some of the other members, I’ve got it pretty good. I try to focus on that.”

  Miguel took them down the hall and into a side room. It was an office with nice oak bookshelves full of books with fancy bindings. Legal books, no doubt. To her left was a heavy desk made of the same wood as the bookshelves. On the opposite side from the desk was a leather couch. Across from her in the base of one of the bookshelves was a cabinet door. Filmy white curtains hung over the floor to ceiling windows in the wall opposite the door they had entered through.

  “This is my father’s office,” Miguel said.

  Veronica stepped carefully, as though she might wake someone if she made too much noise. She wandered around the room. After a few moments of this, she mustered her courage and picked up a pretty glass paperweight that had swirls of red and blue inside it. Nothing came to her. She moved on to the shelves, running her fingers over the spines of books, and along the wood. Still nothing. Against the wall with the door there was a small free-standing cabinet in a darker wood than the rest of the furniture. It had a wide panel on top, a bit like a buffet table. Veronica touched the vase that adorned it, then leaned to open the doors. Inside was a wine rack, a shelf devoted to hard liquor, and two shelves of glasses of various shapes. She ran her hand along the rack, then over the bottles of liquor.

  ~~~

  “Oh, Hector, really, dinner will get cold,” a familiar-looking woman said. Wearing a tasteful pencil dress in burnt orange with her dark hair in an up-do, she looked about fifty years old. To the right of her was a sullen girl in a purple tee-shirt and jeans. Veronica was startled to realize it was Ariana—she was probably about twelve or thirteen.

  Veronica stood tall and she was holding a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a tumbler in the other. Veronica noted that her hands were masculine and liver-spotted. Probably Hector’s, then.

  To the left of the woman stood Miguel, wearing an untucked button-down blue shirt over black slacks. His hair was much shorter. He was grinning at her.

  “It’s okay, Mama. Let’s just let Papa have his way and then we’ll go to dinner.”

  On the other side of Miguel stood a Caucasian man who was mostly bald but for some wispy white hair. He had a mustache and a beard, both slightly bushy. He wore a yellow v-neck sweater and tan trousers.

  “I wouldn’t say no to that whiskey, either, Hector,” he said cheerfully.

  Hector poured whiskey into the glass and proceeded to do so in two more. He handed one to Miguel.

  “Uh, thanks, Papa, but—”

  “Just take it,” Hector said. “I have news, and you’ll want it.”

  Miguel’s eyebrows went up but he didn’t protest, taking the glass from his father.

  “What about Mama? Doesn’t she get a whiskey?” Miguel asked with a nervous laugh.

  Veronica felt Hector shake his head. Ariana rolled her eyes.

  “She already knows,” he said.

  “Knows what?” the bearded man asked.

  “Oh, Hector, do we have to do this now?” Dolores asked.

  Hector held up a hand to her. “Your mother thinks I should wait until I’m so far gone I can’t hide it anymore.”

  Miguel’s eyebrows knit together.

  “What are you talking about?” Ariana demanded.

  “I have Alzheimer’s,” Hector announced. Ariana’s expression slackened, Miguel’s face registered shock and the bearded man closed his eyes. “We got the diagnosis yesterday.”

  Miguel turned to his mother and she reached out her hands. He took them and turned back to his father.

  Hector continued, “I’ve been having problems. Little things, but they add up. I’ve been forgetting things. And getting confused. Doctor Beauvais gave me pills, but it’s a matter of time now.”

  “Oh, Hector, I am so sorry,” said the bearded man.

  “Alzheimer’s,” Miguel said, releasing his mother’s hands. “You’re only sixty-six.”

  “Most people get it after sixty-five,” Dolores said, her face a mask. She wrapped her arms around herself.

  Ariana remained motionless, staring at her father with wide eyes.

  Miguel looked from his mother to his father. “How long—?”

  Hector sighed. “The average life expectancy is eight years after diagnosis. But it’s not set in stone. It can go faster, or slower.”

  “But…” Miguel’s voice trailed off. He pressed his free hand to his mouth, then seemed to realize the other held the tumbler of whiskey. He took a drink.

  “I’ve asked you here to give you something, Miguel,” Hector said. “It was always my intention, but now with the diagnosis… well.” Veronica turned and found a leather-bound folder on the desk. She opened it and produced a paper with an ornate blue border. It had Miguel’s name on it. “The house,” Hector said, handing Miguel the paper. “And I’ve given your mother power of attorney in the event I become incompetent. But I’ve set up a secondary POA for you, Miguel. Just in case.”

  “The house,” Miguel murmured, holding the deed in his free hand.

  “It’s yours,” Hector said. “My father built this house in 1936. I grew up here. I want to die here. But I always knew you’d have it, after that, Miguel�n. It gives me comfort to know that.”

  “Papa, I can’t…”

  Hector w
aved a hand. “I know it’s hard news. But I’m not dead yet. I’ve got many years ahead of me, and I don’t plan to lose my mind so quickly as they say.”

  Ariana’s face crumpled and she turned to her mother, who put an arm around her. Ariana pressed her face into her mother’s shoulder.

  “Well, you’ve given your news. Let’s go in to dinner now,” Dolores said.

  “Papa…” Miguel said.

  “Give me the deed,” Hector said to Miguel. “I’ll keep it in the safe.”

  Miguel handed the deed back to his father. He looked stricken.

  “I expect you to help your mother, Miguel,” Hector said, giving everyone a grin that no one returned. “I know I can count on you. You, too, Ariana. You mother’s going to need you to be there for her.”

  Ariana peered at him, still leaning against Dolores. She seemed angry rather than grief-stricken, like Miguel. Veronica wondered what she thought of Hector giving Miguel the house. Maybe she felt left out.

  ~~~

  Veronica came back to herself. She was standing holding a bottle of whiskey with both hands. Miguel watched, silently, a few feet away.

  She gave him a quick smile and returned the bottle to the minibar.

  “That was a vision, wasn’t it,” Miguel said. It was not a question.

  Veronica nodded. “Who was the man who was here, the night your father gave you the deed?”

  Miguel paused and gave her an appreciative look. “Bud Perdue. He’s an old friend of my father’s.”

  Veronica nodded again, and kept a feeling of satisfaction to herself. It was always nice to be able to give an authenticating detail like the presence of someone she couldn’t have known about.

  “What did you see?” he asked.

  She sighed. “Nothing that will help right now. It was a memory of that night. Your father’s memory.”

  “How does that work? Did you read his mind… by touching the bottle?” Miguel asked, frowning.

  “No,” Veronica said. “At least, I don’t think it works that way. I’m not really sure how it works.” She rubbed the side of her hand with her other thumb. Talking about this with a near-stranger made her uneasy. “I think the spirits that… that want to help, they—they send me memories, sometimes. Or sometimes they show me something that is happening now, or something that will happen, but it’s always like I’m seeing it from someone’s point of view who was there. Just about always. I can’t think of a time when it hasn’t been like that. So somehow… they can access those, um, experiences. I mean, it’s not really accurate to call them memories all the time.”