Texas Love Song

by Altonya Washington

“Which begs the question of why someone would target Melendez employees? Ones on the bottom rung of the totem pole at that?”

  Khouri had no reply which was just as well. Avra’s phone chimed; she was being summoned back to her end of the building.

  “Thanks for letting me ramble, Khouri.” She sprinted for the door. “We’ll talk later.”

  “Yeah.” His reply was barely there. When the door slammed, he turned his desk chair. His gaze settled to the portfolio Setha had left behind.

  * * *

  Machine Melendez occupied an impressive spread on the outskirts of Houston. An elaborately designed silver-toned mini-scraper housed administrative personnel and executives; the rest of the vast acreage was covered by an abundance of buildings of varying shapes and sizes. Each held specific departments of the conglomerate. Danilo Melendez didn’t work from one of the lavish top-floor office suites but rather a spacious yet understated ranch house at the farthest corner of the compound.

  Setha didn’t see the cars belonging to any of her father’s staff and guessed they were all out for lunch. She knew her dad kept a car at the main parking deck and that he often traveled across the spread by horseback.

  “Daddy?” She saw no signs of a horse, but hoped she’d catch him anyway.

  Inside the ranch house, she tossed her things to a credenza in the foyer and decided to wait around for a while. In the living room, she settled on a sofa and wiggled off the teal pumps that were starting to pinch her feet. A smile curved her mouth at the sight of the pictures cluttering the long sofa table.

  Most were pictures of her and her brothers as kids, but it was the ones of her parents that captured and held her interest. She ran her fingers across their smiling images and felt a rush of emotions at the happiness radiating from their faces. She thought of their happy marriage that ended with Adele Melendez’s death.

  Pulling her fingers from the photo, Setha rested back on the sofa. She wondered if she’d ever have anything close to what her parents had shared and grimaced while answering her own question.

  Not if her stalker had his way.

  * * *

  Danilo Melendez was a boisterous man in his late sixties, but he didn’t look a day beyond his early fifties. When his children had lost their mother, they were all certain that their father was sure to follow her into the afterlife. It had been a persistent battle, getting him to live following the death of the woman he had adored. He’d managed somehow and never failed to praise his kids for making him want to live.

  “Mi hermosa chica!” Danilo called out to his “beautiful girl” when he spied her on the sofa.

  “Daddy.” Setha ran into her father’s ready embrace, laughing when he squeezed her tight. She pressed a kiss into his neck and took comfort in the fresh scent of outdoors that always clung to his skin.

  “Mi belleza.” My beauty. Danilo sighed, pulling back to scan his daughter’s face. A tad of scrutiny filled his vivid onyx-colored orbs the longer he regarded her. “Had I known that putting you on the Ross business would prevent you from joining me for dinner, I’d have thought twice.”

  “Just a lot of things on my plate, Daddy.” She squeezed Danilo’s hand where it cupped her cheek. “The Review business is really a very small part of it.”

  “Is that right?” Danilo’s scrutiny deepened. “I asked you to handle this because you weren’t busy.” He grimaced. “Sam won’t settle for anyone else being involved except you… Perhaps Pow or Lou—I could always have one of them—”

  “Daddy, no.” Setha squeezed her father’s hands and gave them a little shake. “I’m not overworked, I promise. Just…a little more protective of my ‘downtime’ is all.”

  Nodding, Dan kissed the back of her hand. “That I can definitely appreciate. I thank you for taking time to see me then.”

  “Oh…” Setha pulled the man into another hug.

  “So how’s it going over there at Ross?” Dan asked, escorting Setha back to the sofa and then heading for the bar.

  “Fine.” She curled her feet beneath her and watched her dad at the bar. “I am a little curious about something, though.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s about Wade Cornelius’s death.” She blinked when a heavy clatter of glasses rose from the vicinity of the bar. “Can I get that, Dad?”

  Danilo was waving his hand to urge her to keep her seat. “Go on, belleza. What about Cornelius?” Absently, he brushed shards of broken glass into a wastebasket.

  “Well, he wrote a lot of stories—stories about Melendez.” Setha snuggled deeper into the overstuffed plaid sofa. “There’s been some question about whether the Review reported on certain…goings-on at the company from a slanted perspective.”

  Dan laughed and quickly finished preparing the drinks. “And what would make you ask such things, belleza?”

  “But it’s true, isn’t it?” She reached out to take the glass of ginger ale he passed her. “I mean, Ross never has a bad word to print about us.” She studied the bubbles fizzing up in the drink. “Same can’t really be said for other papers in the country, can it?”

  Dan chuckled, leaning back and propping his boots onto the unfinished wood table before the sofa. “I can recall several favorable stories about Melendez—just in the past few months if you must know.”

  Setha shook her head, knowing where her father was headed. “Folks aren’t always quick to run down charities ’specially when they’re doing good work.”

  “Then here’s to good work.” Dan raised his glass in a toast and then sipped the scotch reverently. “What is it you want to know, sweetness?”

  Studying the ginger ale, Setha considered her words. “Are there things Ross covered at a slant and could those things ever come back to haunt us?”

  “Haunt?” Dan bellowed around a roar of laughter. “Now you’ve got me thinking that you have too much of this ‘downtime.’”

  She didn’t share her father’s amusement. “I’ve never been happier.”

  “But I’m concerned. So are los hijos.” He reached over to smother her free hand beneath his. “We can all tell that something’s…off with you.”

  Setha drank down over half the ginger ale. “Now I can tell that you’ve been spending too much time around Sam. You’re starting to sound just like him.”

  Dan took her glass and set it on the coffee table along with his own. He next reached for her arm and made her face him. “We miss our bubbly girl. A family of gruff men needs that sweet element to remind us of the important things.”

  Setha’s expression reflected cool understanding. “I know for a fact that your hijos have lots of sweet elements to keep them occupied.”

  Dan’s somber expression lasted only a second longer and then he was laughing. “All right then, chica. I’ll back down.” He gave her a slight tug. “I want you to come to me or your brothers if there’s anything I need to know, understood?”

  “Understood.” She hesitated to make eye contact for a second or two. “Will you do the same?” She looked up in time to catch the flicker of something in Dan’s eyes.

  He smiled brightly and pulled Setha into a hug. “I will,” he said.

  * * *

  A few acres down from where Danilo kept his ranch house/office, stood a range of barns and fields where a select group of Melendez racehorses grazed. Inside one of those barns, the Melendez brothers had drinks with Bradley Crest, Chief of Detectives for City of Houston.

  “Is this one of the perks of bein’ Chief of Ds, B? Or will you get any work done at all today?” Lugo Melendez inquired, a ready smile sparking his double dimples.

  Brad tossed back his second bourbon and water. “This is like a late lunch, Lou. After this, I’ll be headin’ home for a shower and an early dinner.”

  Male laughter filtered up through the high rafters of
the multilevel barn.

  “There’s your answer, little brother. It’s definitely one of the perks of the job,” Paolo Melendez said when the laughter showed signs of quieting.

  The men enjoyed their drinks in silence for a while. Samson broke into the mood once he’d finished his second mug of Dos Equis.

  “Anything new, B?” he asked.

  The loaded question removed all traces of easiness from Brad’s face. The immigrant murders had cast a definite shadow over the top levels of Machine Melendez. Sam, his father and brothers had forbidden their department heads to reveal anything about the victims being Melendez employees. It had worked for a while, but not for long.

  “I’ve got no idea where the leak came from.” Brad tipped his beige Stetson back on his head a few inches. “Truth be told, it’s probably better the employees know. Make ’em a lil more cautious.”

  “Or a little more frantic.” Paolo poured his second bourbon and shrugged. “It’d help if the victims had more in common besides bein’ Melendez employees.” His gruff voice sounded rougher in the wake of agitation.

  “Well, if there’s anything more, we ain’t sniffed it out yet.” Brad finished his drink. “Not to mention they’re all newly immigrated to the country. That don’t help, either—not much history to go on.”

  “What about before they left Melendez?” Sam asked. “They at least have that in common.”

  “Right.” Brad’s response carried a hint of sarcasm. “Aside from two girls waitressing, a guy who worked as a mechanic, one as a bellboy and another as a cook, nothing extreme stands out.” He kicked at the barn’s dusty floor. “I’m afraid their most intriguing commonality is working for MM.”

  “What about socially?” Lou asked, scratching at the line where his straight hair tapered. “Maybe they’ve gone out together.”

  “Good, but no. We’ve looked down that road,” Brad told them. “We’re confident that they never had social connections. Machine Melendez is so vast, those people could’ve worked there for years and never met once.”

  “There’s something.” Samson held the empty beer bottle by the neck and tapped it to his knee. “We’re just not seein’ it. For those kids to be targeted… It means something.”

  “We ain’t givin’ up on this, guys,” Brad promised, understanding how heavily this weighed on one of the most powerful families in Texas.

  Paolo approached Brad with his hand outstretched. “Thanks for comin’ out, man.”

  Brad’s grin triggered the laugh lines around his sky-blue gaze. “Never pass on a chance to take a swig from your daddy’s prized bourbon.”

  “B.” Sam remained seated, but reached out to clasp Brad’s hand when he passed.

  “So? What now?” Paolo asked once Lou left to walk Brad to his car.

  “We need to find out who those kids were.” Sam pitched the empty bottle into a tall rusted can that served as a wastebasket.

  Paolo’s gray-black stare narrowed toward the barn’s entrance. “Brad talks like they were nobodies.”

  “They were somethin’ to somebody. So we find out who,” Sam said.

  Chapter 8

  Setha turned down her father’s request to join him for a horse ride across the grounds. She spent the next half hour on the living room sofa, before strolling through the house. Her walk took her into Dan’s office where she studied the endless fields beyond the window behind the maple claw-footed desk at the rear of the spacious room.

  Gradually, her interest turned toward her immediate surroundings and she observed the room—the awards and accolades. So many honors…

  She took a seat behind the desk and began a web search. Topic: Wade Cornelius’s stories for the Ross Review. Setha spent another half hour or so pulling Cornelius’s pieces on Machine Melendez. She took time to read the last story written by Wade just before he left the publication he had helped Basil Ross to create.

  Printing out the story copy, Setha frowned over it in a thoughtful manner before slipping it into her purse. She browsed other hits, only because Melendez was mentioned somewhere within the text. There was an obituary for a John Holloway—a former employee for Machine Melendez.

  Retrieving the printed story from her purse, Setha studied it another few minutes. “John Holloway,” she whispered. There was something, but she hadn’t the patience to muddle through it at this point. Checking her watch, she printed the obit for later perusal, shoved everything into her purse and left the house.

  * * *

  “Hey, cowboy? Unless you need anything, I’m signin’ out for the day.”

  “Nah, I’m good.” Khouri kept the back of his chair turned toward his assistant.

  “I know what’s got you so prickly.” Marta strolled into the office, leaning against the row of low oak file cabinets lining a portion of the back wall. “She certainly is a beauty and brains to go with it. No wonder you can’t keep your mind on anything else.”

  “Marta—”

  “It’s about time, if you ask me. Which, I know you didn’t,” she said when he turned in his chair to face her. “I still say it’s about time you were the one not knowin’ which way is up. Lord knows you put enough poor girls in that frame of mind.”

  Khouri let his head rest on the high back of the chair.

  “Nighty, night,” Marta sang and sauntered from the office.

  Khouri shook his head, thinking how much Marta’s arrivals and departures reminded him of a tornado touching down and taking flight. Sighing low, he traded the desk chair for the sofa and resumed his thoughts of the meeting with Setha Melendez.

  More accurately, he resumed his thoughts of the kiss with Setha. Even more specifically her kissing him. He knew he’d confused her with his reaction. He’d intended—hoped—she’d take the lead. Her actions told him she was as attracted to him as he was to her. That she wasn’t keeping herself under lock and key for another man. The smirk coming to the seductive curve of his mouth then was arrogance personified. Aside from being a mild inconvenience, another man wouldn’t have stopped him from going after her.

  Going after and getting. He sat up then, thumbing through the portfolio she’d left behind. He was gone from the office moments later.

  * * *

  Setha Melendez had always been a nervous cook. This was not to imply that her cooking skills were poor. On the contrary, they were remarkable considering she was mostly self-taught. She’d learned by trial and error, using her father and brothers as guinea pigs for her various recipes.

  Her efforts paid off in the best way. Unfortunately, being a great cook didn’t come without a price. Setha cooked when she was nervous and she cooked a considerable lot. She’d been at home three hours already following the visit to her dad at Machine Melendez. The long breakfast nook counter was filled with an array of pies and cookies. That was only the first batch.

  There was something missing—something about the unfolding mystery, her stalker and the deceased Wade Cornelius. Every instinct told her there was a connection between Cornelius’s last story and whatever it was that she’d stumbled into. She only needed to find the link.

  * * *

  Khouri stopped his truck at a distance from Setha’s front door and observed the scene meeting his eyes. She had told him that she lived alone, but the four…five guys in her driveway looked very much at home. They were all shirtless, simply attired in saggy denim shorts while polishing two cars as music blared from the speakers of each vehicle.

  Resting an elbow to the open driver’s-side window, Khouri drew fingers through the glossy onyx-colored curls cropped close atop his head. He used his other hand to tug his tie free of his shirt collar and tried to make sense of the scene. He straightened behind the wheel when Setha arrived outside.

  She linked her arms about the waists of two of the young men, while the others ambled about
. Then the merry sextet made their way around the back of the house. With a curious, albeit dangerous, smirk sharpening his caramel-doused features, Khouri grabbed the portfolio and headed for the back of the house, as well.

  Conversation and laughter became heightened the farther he traveled along the stone lane leading to the patio. Khouri muttered a curse at the unlocked double doors and made his way inside. He followed the raised voices and laughter all the way to the kitchen.

  He refused to acknowledge the sense of relief that all the liveliness came from that area of the house as opposed to the bedroom. Smirking then for a purely different reason, he leaned against the high curving entryway and watched Setha issuing heating instructions as she presented each young man with a pie.

  “And tell your moms to give me a call, all right? Now, on your way.” She accepted hugs and kisses from each of the boys.

  Khouri watched the kids retrieve bikes parked on the deck outside the kitchen. He returned to observing Setha as she moved around the kitchen—wiping down counters, adjusting oven temperatures. Every so often, she stopped to mull over a folder on the kitchen table.

  He knocked once on the doorway and waved when she whirled around.

  “Khouri?” she breathed, eyes wide. “What—”

  “Better question might be ‘how did I get in?’” He braced off the doorway. “Don’t folks in River Oaks lock their doors?”

  “With a houseful of teenagers, such things are often overlooked. When they’re here, I tend to lose track of time.”

  “Rowdy bunch.” He smiled. “Yours?” he teased.

  Amused, Setha rolled her eyes. “Kids of neighbors. I’ve known those guys since they were infants.”

  “It’s no excuse not to lock your door, Setha.” He tapped the portfolio to his pant leg. “It’s exactly that type of forgetfulness an intruder would count on.”

  “Do you know you have a knack for instilling calm?” She rolled her eyes not so much out of amusement then.

  “I can’t help it.” He easily blocked her path when she would have headed for the refrigerator. “Lock your doors.”