Here Today, Gone Tamale

by Rebecca Adler

  * * *

  Discouraged, but not defeated, I arrived at Milagro and found Lily, Anthony’s sister, seated in the dining room.

  “That girl,” Aunt Linda gestured with her chin, “says she’s Anthony’s sister.”

  “She’s telling the truth.”

  My aunt’s eyes grew round. “She also said you offered her a job.”

  I grabbed Aunt Linda by the arm and pulled her into her office. “I apologize for not discussing the matter with you first, but she’s the only person left to take care of her three younger siblings.”

  “We barely have the business for our current staff.”

  “If this is the only way we can help Anthony, then we have to give her a job.” I held up my hand to stop her protest. “She’ll have to work as hard as everyone else.”

  “You’re darn right she will.”

  “But if we had enough business to hire Anthony, we have enough to hire Lily.”

  Aunt Linda walked to the door and peered out to where the teen waited. “She’s kind of rough around the edges.”

  “Have her fill out an application. Maybe she has experience.”

  With a snort, my aunt crossed to her desk and handed me Lily’s application. “I already did that, of course. She does have experience, working at Elaine’s Pies.”

  That was news to me. “Why’d she leave?”

  Aunt Linda shrugged. “I’m not sure she did. I think she still cleans up after the restaurant closes.”

  Elaine’s Pies closed at seven. Hopefully, Lily didn’t return home later than ten o’clock. Even so, who was watching Anthony’s younger siblings while she was out? I thought I knew the answer.

  “Why not give her a chance?” I said, pleading with my eyes and tone.

  “Okay, okay. How could I say no?”

  “There’s one last thing to do.” I marched into the dining room with Lily’s application and sat down across from her in one of the booths.

  “What took you so long?” she asked.

  I frowned. “Were you in school today?”

  She looked away. “Yes, but I think school’s stupid.”

  Leaning forward, I tapped on her hand. “We’re going to give you a chance, but you stay in school. That was our deal.”

  “What if I’m sick?” She lifted her chin.

  “You better be running a fever, or else.”

  With a nod, she stuck out her small, unblemished hand.

  I shook it, fighting back a smile. “Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “Aunt Linda tells me you’re working at Elaine’s?”

  “Yeah, I clean on Monday nights for a few hours.”

  “Why only one day a week?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Some old woman cleans the other six nights.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know, but my little sister cleans toilets better than she does. “

  “Are you sure that’s the reason?”

  “Why else?” Before my eyes she’d transformed again into the angry teenager.

  “Who puts your brother and sisters to bed when you’re gone?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Our neighbor.”

  “You trust her?”

  With an almost imperceptible nod, she agreed.

  I couldn’t work miracles or raise money for a private defense attorney for her brother Anthony, but I could keep her in school, and we could help her place food on their table.

  Wanting to lighten the mood, I slapped my hands to the tabletop. “Can you start today?”

  Lily’s eyes grew wide with excitement as if the cloud of despair that hung over her head had suddenly blown away. “Yes, oh yes!” she cried, slamming her fist to the table.

  Sliding out of the booth, I grinned. “Come on, don’t just sit there. We’ve got a ton of work to do to get ready for the auction dinner tonight.”

  She bounded from her seat. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Can you get someone to watch your brother and sisters this evening on short notice?”

  “I’ll call and fix it.”

  Clapping her on the back, I brought her to Aunt Linda. “Okay, sweet aunt of mine, she’s all yours.” My aunt and I exchanged a look full of understanding. We would make a place for this one, this teenager with the world on her narrow shoulders.

  * * *

  In spite of all the work before me, I made time to stop in at the Boot and Bag for my high heels. Though tomorrow my feet would pay back my foolishness with pain, today it was all about looking stylish for the silent auction. Hillary, Melanie, and every other society glamour girl that Big Bend County had to offer would not find anything lacking in my appearance at tonight’s event if I had my way.

  Mrs. Cho greeted me with a polite smile, took my claim ticket, and went in search of my heels. I followed only far enough to peek around the corner of the workroom door. Mr. Cho was not as his workbench, but his wife turned and caught me poking my head inside their inner sanctum.

  “Please, you wait up front,” she said, waving her hands as if to brush me away like so much dust and grime.

  I gave her a sunny smile. I had no real expectation that he had information to pass along. It was too soon. Heck, for all I knew he might decide to keep his observations to himself. He hadn’t exactly promised to join me in my search.

  A moment later, she returned with my shoes, rang up my repair, and handed over the source of tomorrow’s torment.

  I bade her good-bye, and she watched me go as if she thought I would sneak past her to rummage through the piles of stinky, well-worn shoes in their workroom.

  She wasn’t far off the mark.

  As I opened my door to the Prius, a champagne-colored luxury car pulled in beside me. I turned, expecting to greet another person picking up shoes for the auction dinner. Instead I came face-to-face with Mr. Cho.

  I hesitated. Should I ask him? Was it too soon?

  His alarm chirped as he walked around the hood of the car.

  “Hello, Mr. Cho. How are you today?”

  Without acknowledging my greeting, he stopped to inspect the hood ornament on his car. He took a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped a bit of something from the metallic finish.

  Had I really expected a clue to drop from his mouth like the proverbial pearl of wisdom? I sighed. Yes, I had.

  I started my car, threw it into reverse, and saw Mr. Cho in my peripheral vision. He was standing outside my window, gesturing for me to roll it down.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Callahan, there are too many boots in this town for you to find the ones you seek.”

  “Uh,” I decided to ignore the married prefix. “I hadn’t thought about it in exactly those terms.” Out of three thousand citizens, at least a thousand of them owned a pair of boots, and some of them owned two or three pairs. Yikes!

  If eyes truly twinkled, his shone brighter than the stars over the Chihuahuan Desert on a cloudless night in October. “Today I received two pairs of boots, one size nine and a half and one size ten.”

  “Men’s or women’s?” I demanded.

  “Men’s.”

  Even though I was no stranger to the fact that most murderers were men, especially those who killed by strangulation, I was disappointed. In the back of my mind, I had begun to consider Melanie a viable suspect.

  Now I was back to square one.

  “Did either pair have a broken heel?” I asked.

  He threw a hurried glance over his shoulder toward the shop window. “Both pairs need new heels.”

  Who was I fooling? This whole boot print idea of mine was about as ridiculous as looking for a needle in a haystack.

  “Thanks, anyway.”

  “Wait,” he said, leaning closer. “One pair is worn on the outer edge, not both.”
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br />   It was all I could do not to whoop and holler. “Who was it? Who dropped them off?”

  “No one dropped them off.” He frowned as if regretting his decision to help me in my campaign for justice.

  “But—”

  He held a white paper sack from a restaurant in his left hand. He held up a shopping bag in his right. It was a large to-go bag from Elaine’s Pies.

  “What are you doing?” Mrs. Cho called from the doorway.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When I picked up lunch, Mrs. Burnett gave me the boots to repair.”

  “A man’s pair of boots?” Did they belong to P.J.? Could he have strangled Dixie for some unknown reason?

  “Yes, yes.” He turned to his wife. “Go away. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She responded in a high, piercing voice. “You come now or you’ll be in big trouble.” She went inside, but she continued to glare at us through the window.

  “Did they belong to her husband?”

  “I don’t know. The soles were . . . grimy, slippery.”

  “Greasy?”

  He thought for a moment. “Yes, greasy, that’s the word.”

  A red pickup truck drove up on the other side of the Prius. An elderly woman made her way slowly to the Boot and Bag’s front door.

  “I tell you all I know.” Mr. Cho hurried away.

  I pulled out, more than ready to escape Mrs. Cho’s censure. My adrenaline was pumping. I tried telling myself to calm down, to not treat this new information as a salient fact in the investigation.

  All I could think of was Melanie and P.J. Which one was more likely to wear an old worn-out boot into a dark alley?

  Perhaps she had seen Mr. Cho while having lunch at her mother’s restaurant and given him the boots to save herself a trip. Or she wanted to give them to him at Elaine’s to prevent anyone seeing her dropping them off at the Boot and Bag.

  My mind was racing. I told myself hundreds of people walked on the outside of their feet and hundreds more worked in environments where they wore out their heels. I swallowed. How many people in a town this size walked on the outside of their feet, broke their boot heels, and stepped in grease so thick it coated the soles of their shoes?

  I didn’t have enough to accuse Melanie and P.J. Pratt, but my gut told me one of them stepped in the grease next to Dixie’s cold body. If one of them hadn’t killed her, then they knew who had.

  During tonight’s auction dinner I could watch them unobserved during the dinner and dancing. Behind my role as caterer, I could question all the key players: Mayor Cogburn and his wife, Suellen and Elaine Burnett, Ryan and Hillary, and even Lightfoot and Sheriff Wallace. It was a tall order, and one I wasn’t confident I had the finesse to pull off. Being a hostess and a community reporter had helped me hone my idle chit-chatting skills, and that would have to be enough.

  * * *

  “Lily, this way,” I cried. The teen had made a herculean effort to serve tonight, securing the neighbor as a babysitter, rustling up black pants and a white button-down shirt, and borrowing a bow tie from Aunt Linda. Now she carried yet another tray of bite-size braised beef tacos from the truck to the kitchen.

  The festival committee had secured Mars Hall to add a genuine historical feel to their main event. Once a country church, the simple wooden structure offered wide oak flooring and arched windows with panes of clear and stained glass. There was plenty of room inside for dining and for viewing auction items. Outside, a bandstand and wooden dance floor waited under a bower of live oaks festooned with twinkling lights.

  Gingerly, I took the platter from her. “There should be only two more trays of grilled shrimp. If you prop the back door open, you can bring them both in at the same time. She stared as if processing what I’d said and then bolted for the door like a scared jackrabbit. I had to smile. From the ankles up, she wore the same outfit as the rest of our staff, but on her feet she sported black converse.

  “We’re set to go, Jo Jo.” Uncle Eddie raised his hand for a high five.

  I slapped his hand but had to mention a potential fiasco. “Just how melted are the margaritas?” We’d brought two frozen margarita machines filled with traditional and strawberry-flavored deliciousness for tonight’s event. Regrettably, the machines were loaded into the truck first and had to sit in the sun while the equipment, food items, and trays of appetizers were brought out and secured.

  He waved off my concern. “They’re plugged in and refreezing as we speak. No harm, no foul.”

  “I could use one right about now.”

  Chuckling, he gave me a thump on the head. “Got to keep your head clear tonight.”

  If he only knew how clear my thinking needed to be over the next few hours.

  With a cursory glance at our setup, he left me to supervise the staff until Aunt Linda arrived. My aunt always made sure everything was ready for our events except for herself. After we’d loaded up the trucks, she’d raced home to shower and throw on her only evening dress.

  Uncle Eddie and Bubba struck up a conversation outside at the BBQ smoker, where the BBQ king was finishing off his briskets. Soon he would take them out to let the meat rest. Minutes before dinner service, he and his staff would slice the beef and serve it with plates of German potato salad, black-eyed peas, pickles and onions, and gigantic dinner rolls.

  As Lily added her trays to those on our serving table, I made a welcome announcement to our staff. “We have forty-five minutes until the evening begins and twenty until they open the doors to the early arrivals. Senora Mari sent some tamales, rice, and beans for your dinner and some flan if I’m not mistaken.”

  A whoop exploded in the air from Lily’s direction. I smiled. “Enjoy, but be finished in fifteen minutes.” Our youngest server easily maneuvered to the front of the line.

  Now was a perfect window of opportunity to do reconnaissance over at Elaine’s setup area. She and Suellen had arrived with their servers fifteen minutes earlier. Though Elaine was dressed to the nines, she was directing her staff as they plated the pies. She’d brought traditional Texas favorites that were guaranteed to please locals and visitors. There was peach and blackberry cobbler, and there were pies. She’d brought so many I couldn’t imagine how she’d managed it without pulling her hair out: pecan, Dutch apple, chocolate pecan, chocolate, and coconut cream.

  I wandered over to wish them well.

  “Josie, how’s that waiter of yours doing?” Elaine said as I opened my mouth to say hi.

  “Uh, do you mean Anthony?”

  She reached over and moved a dessert plate filled with pecan pie back away from the edge of the table before she spoke. “Yes, I believe that’s his name, the one that killed Dixie.”

  “He didn’t kill her.”

  Looking at me with sympathy, she nodded her head.

  “What they have is merely circumstantial. They can’t convict him without hard evidence,” I said.

  “You and your family must feel like you’ve been put through the wringer.”

  I studied her kind face. What could I ask her that wouldn’t make it appear as if I were out to accuse Melanie or P.J.? “Thanks for hiring Anthony’s sister. His family is in dire straits.”

  Her attention snapped to where one of her servers was slicing pie. “Make them bigger, Michele,” she ordered. “We’ll never live it down if folks think we’re being chintzy with dessert.

  “What were you saying? Oh, yes, the girl. Suellen didn’t know she was that thug’s sister or she wouldn’t have hired her. She’s . . .”

  “He’s not a thug,” I said and bit my tongue hard to keep from sassing my elders. “Has she given you any trouble?”

  Elaine’s mouth pulled down. “Something happened between her and Suellen, but I never got in the middle of it.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.” I glanced to where the girl s
tood, spooning tamale sauce into her mouth. Suellen was the one I really needed to talk to. If I finessed the conversation with her, we could start talking about Lily and end up discussing Melanie and P.J.’s whereabouts on the night of the murder following the tamalada.

  Vibrating with nervous intensity, Elaine cast a vigilant eye over the dining room filled with her handiwork: western-themed decorations, fragrant down-home catering, honky-tonk musicians, auction items, and enough volunteers to shake a stick at.

  “Congratulations,” I said with genuine appreciation. “You’ve done a wonderful job pulling everything together.”

  She gave me a cursory nod. “Thank you, but it’s not over until we auction off the last item.”

  I glanced around again and saw no sign of Suellen, but I noticed our staff cleaning up after their meal. “I’m sorry Dixie never gave you the auction necklace as planned. It would have been the highlight of the evening.”

  Smiling like the cat that swallowed the canary, Elaine placed her hand on my arm. “May I show you the best surprise ever?”

  I smiled in return at her obvious delight. “Sure.”

  She led me to a display of gift certificates, spa getaways, concert tickets, televisions and stereos, candles and candlesticks, home decorating items, and other auction items until we reached the end of the last table.

  “Fred Mueller donated these pieces.” She pointed to a set of pearl earrings and a matching necklace.

  “They’re lovely.”

  “Oh, yes, as far as fakes go.” We had reached the last display. “Here is the pièce de résistance.”

  My eyes widened. Before me was Dixie Honeycutt’s squash blossom necklace, a twin to the one I’d seen in Patti’s journal. Where the stones in that piece were greenish blue, these were blue as a tropical sea. Nestled in a velvet-lined display case, it was joined by a matching bracelet and dangle earrings.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “From Dixie, of course.”

  “I don’t understand. This isn’t the original. Patti heard Melanie say that one was stolen.”

  The committee chairwoman’s mouth fell open and then snapped shut. “My daughter should learn to keep her lip buttoned.” I couldn’t make out if Elaine was angry or embarrassed, but she managed to lift the corners of her mouth while clenching her jaw—which looked painful.