Love the Sinner

by Lynn Bulock

  “I know. But this week I pulled the ultimate female blooper.” Lexy grimaced and took a drink from her water bottle. “I was visiting clients off-site in one of our satellite offices, and I ran into one of the women I don’t see very often. I remembered that she had just told everybody she was expecting the last time I’d seen her. So she came into the office and I tell her, ‘You look great. When’s the baby due?’ Apparently little Jaden is seven weeks old.”

  “Whoops,” Dot said, trying to stifle a grin. “But I imagine we’ve all done that or something equally embarrassing at some time or another.”

  I knew I had. But that didn’t make it feel any better for Lexy. The only thing that would have felt worse for most women was being on the receiving end of the question. I could just imagine the layer of frost that needed to be chipped out of that office before they got down to any other business.

  “Jaden,” Dot said, shaking her head and almost clucking. “What ever happened to ordinary names like Mary or Sue?”

  “Jaden’s a boy,” Lexy said. “I’d never heard of it, either, but apparently it’s hugely popular.”

  “We’ll take your word on it,” Dot said with a shrug. “Personally it’s a new one on me, too.” Before she could add anything else, Heather burst into the room. This time she wasn’t dripping like she’d been the last time we had a meeting, but she was almost as dramatic.

  Her wardrobe was beginning to suffer that assault most women’s clothing dealt with in the last stages of pregnancy. Loose tops you were sure were going to fit for a while longer never did, and buying real maternity clothes seemed like a waste. Tonight she wore the same slightly baggy sweater she’d had on in the rain before, and another pair of bagged-at-the-knee leggings. This pair was gray. It was cool enough tonight that she was wearing tennis shoes instead of sandals, though. Unfortunately she had the same unhappy expression that she’d had previously.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late. I really had everything ready to be on time, but then I got a phone call from that Detective Fernandez,” she said, her lower lip starting to tremble. “He wants to see me tomorrow morning. I think I’m in trouble because he said that if I had a lawyer, it was probably time to bring one with me.”

  At least this time she wasn’t throwing up. I decided that was a good thing, anyway. The fountain of tears that started after her announcement would be hard enough to calm down. It looked like another meeting where I might not get a chance to talk for quite a while.

  That was okay, though, because this was a more serious problem even than the ones I was bringing with me tonight. Clearly something had happened that made Fernandez think that Heather was a viable suspect. The mere fact that this group of her churchgoing friends knew better wasn’t going to convince him otherwise. We needed to come up with something else that looked a lot more like hard and fast proof to repute whatever it was that he thought he’d found.

  Thankfully Lexy was there, and despite what she’d said before, she kept her wits about her. She might not have had the best week at work with the Jaden debacle, but she still proved her worth around here as a dynamite attorney. After getting Heather calmed down enough to talk, and asking her a few pointed questions, she was reassuring her that this wasn’t the end of the world. I’m glad she could see it that way. It sounded pretty serious to me to have a county sheriff’s detective tell you to bring a lawyer to the station, and I told her so.

  Lexy actually smiled. “Hey, if he said that now would be a good time to bring a lawyer and that was as forcefully as he put it, he doesn’t have anything that will stick for sure. That is the way he put it, right? Nobody Mirandized you or anything, right?”

  Heather’s blank looks had all of us who watched cop dramas on TV or read mystery novels explaining to her at once, along with Lexy. “Read you your rights, dear,” Dot explained. “As in ‘you have the right to remain silent’ and all that.”

  “Oh. No, nobody did any of that. And he was still perfectly nice. He just sounded so serious.”

  Lexy nodded. “That probably means he has a witness of one type or another. There’s either somebody that’s seen you someplace you said you haven’t been or somebody that thinks they can place you at or near the crime scene. They can’t be real positive, because if they were you’d be on your way to a formal lineup by now. And if that were the case you’d have been told to lawyer up in a lot more forceful way. I wonder what he’s got.”

  While she was puzzling it over, something hit me. I might be able to provide the missing piece of this particular puzzle. “There was someone of the housekeeping staff who might have seen who went in and out of Dennis’s room just before he died,” I said. I told them about Adela Rodriguez and what the detective had said about her before. I also added that in my other encounters with her, she didn’t strike me as somebody who would make guesses about something as serious as murder.

  Lexy smiled. “This helps, Gracie Lee. This really helps. Okay, who speaks the best Spanish?” The puzzled looks she got had her smiling even wider. “Hey, we can’t all go down to the sheriff’s station tomorrow with Heather like some kind of posse. I figure we’ll have to leave a couple people behind. And if Ms. Rodriguez speaks mostly Spanish, then we need to understand what she says.”

  Dot waved a hand. “Even after all this time in Southern California, I’m afraid my Spanish is awful. Restaurant stuff mostly.”

  Heather smiled apologetically. “I’m with Dot. Besides, I don’t think they’d let me stick around if they’re interviewing a witness that they think saw me commit a murder.”

  Lexy looked at me and I shrugged. “I wish I could tell you otherwise, but I’m a Missouri girl, remember? I’m picking up a little already, but not enough to understand a native speaker, especially if she’s excited.”

  Linnette put an arm around me. “You need to go anyway, because you’re so involved in this. And I’ll go with you to translate. One way or another I’ve picked up some great phrases in Spanish and I’m always looking for a way to try them out.”

  Lexy grinned. “And seeing as how you look more like an aging Valley girl than a chica, you can get away with things that another translator might not be able to.”

  Linnette’s answering grin looked like a fox exiting the henhouse. “My thoughts exactly. Now what time tomorrow are we heading for the sheriff’s department?”

  8

  Maybe if we spent enough time in the sheriff’s department station I’d get used to it. I didn’t know whether to hope I eventually did get comfortable there and finally stopped sweating every time the scent of the place hits my nostrils, or just hope I didn’t have to go there again.

  I’d have liked to think that I’d be done, soon, going to see Detective Fernandez about anything. But that would have meant that he either decided that Dennis’s death was an accident after all, or figured out who did it, so it was not likely to happen anytime soon.

  Today it still felt as uncomfortable as usual because nothing had changed. There were still a lot of folks in uniform behind glass partitions that I suspected were bulletproof windows that looked into offices and places to pay fines. Since they have some limited county holding cells down in the basement, there were plenty of noises and smells I associated with that, too, along with the vague scents of microwave popcorn and coffee floating around everyplace.

  I had picked up Heather at her mother’s house to take her to the station. We’d all agreed that in stressful situations like this one, she probably shouldn’t drive. And I suspected that Lexy didn’t want to have her stuck with a car there if the worst happened and they threatened to book her for something. I couldn’t imagine the detective having any information that would result in that happening, but I’d been wrong before when it came to him.

  Heather was shaky and nervous, but conversely looked better than I’d seen her in quite a while. She’d obviously dressed for the occasion in a pair of tailored slacks and a top that flattered her condition and her coloring. She even seemed to be wearing a
touch of makeup and her hair was done. Maybe she was trying to make herself look as little as possible as she’d looked the day of Dennis’s death, when we all had gravitated toward jeans and casual shirts except Edna. But then since Edna never wore jeans, it wasn’t a rarity that she’d shown up that day in an aqua polyester pant suit. I wondered where she and her aqua wardrobe were spending their days right now. I had some ideas, but nothing I could prove so far.

  Lexy met us in the parking lot, looking even more dressed up than Heather. “I’m going in to work after lunch,” she said, conscious of our looks at her sharp outfit. For the most part I’d seen Lexy looking as casual as the rest of us in the evenings at Christian Friends meetings, but that didn’t appear to be how she went to work. “And I talked to one of my friends from law school. If this goes any further than today she’s on board to represent you. If anything happens, you don’t want an entertainment lawyer handling your case for a criminal matter.”

  “I trust you, Lexy,” Heather said, her voice sounding a bit shaky.

  “That’s a real compliment, but I don’t trust me, not in a case like this could become. But for today, I think I’ll be fine. And with me along, it will be obvious to this detective that you took him seriously.”

  I didn’t think that would be a problem. Fernandez expected all of us to take him seriously, and the rest had so far. I even had most of the time, even though today it was harder to take him seriously than it had been before. How could he possibly believe that Heather had murdered Dennis? It just didn’t make sense to me. But then, the entire situation we’d found ourselves in here didn’t make sense to me anymore.

  When we all trooped down to the detective division, I noticed something important enough to try and catch Lexy’s eye. I couldn’t, not right at first. So as she walked down the hallways and waiting areas in front of Linnette and myself and as she chatted with Heather, she didn’t know what I’d seen.

  Or rather who I’d seen. The slender, older Latina blended right in sitting on the benches with a younger friend or relative, both of them in the area I’d associated so far with family visiting for the jail. That, or it was where you went to bail somebody out when they were in the county lock-up cells beyond the heavy doors nearby. I thanked Ben silently for being a fine, upstanding young man of such good character that I hadn’t ever had to find out what the similar facilities looked like in Missouri. As it was, I could only guess about why people were sitting on those benches. Judging from the demeanor of the people sitting there, none of their reasons were happy ones.

  The one woman with neat but slightly faded clothes, a narrow face and dark hair going silver was definitely Adela Rodriguez from the care center, though. I’d not known her name until Detective Fernandez told me, but I recognized her easily, even without the uniform she usually wore. When she saw our group, she sat up straighter and said something in a very low tone to the younger woman sitting beside her.

  That was the moment I was positive that by marching Heather past her, we were providing an unofficial lineup for Fernandez and his main witness. I didn’t know whether to say something out loud to Lexy and Heather ahead of us or not, so I kept quiet.

  Jeannie in the detective division’s front office seemed surprised to see this big a group. Even before all four of us got comfortable in the outer office she’d buzzed back to the detective and he was coming through the door. “Why don’t you go ahead and take care of that other matter for me,” he said to her, and she rose and nodded. I suspected that the “other matter” had something to do with alerting Adela outside, and I felt like telling him she’d already seen us go in one direction up the hallway.

  “Ms. Taylor, it looks like you brought quite a group,” he said, surveying us.

  “Well, you said to bring my lawyer, and I couldn’t see leaving Gracie Lee out of this,” she said, not really explaining Linnette’s presence. I was glad she hadn’t. Fernandez wasn’t going to be overly thrilled if he figured out how much conniving we’d done the night before.

  “Alexis Adams,” Lexy said, sticking out a hand for a handshake. “I really hope my presence here won’t be necessary, Detective.”

  “I’m sure we all do, Ms. Adams,” he said with a disarming smile. “For the present I can guarantee you that your presence isn’t really needed because the first thing I need to do is ask Ms. Taylor to go back down to the fingerprinting station where she’s been before. It seems we had a small problem with the card she left last time.”

  Lexy and Heather both looked slightly confused and annoyed. I was pretty sure that the card I’d watched them use to print Heather last time was just as good as any of the others we’d left. However, when I thought about it a moment more, I figured out what Fernandez was doing. Going from here to the fingerprinting station would require another stroll right past the bench where Adela and her companion sat.

  “Do you need mine, as well, Detective? My prints were taken during the same session that Ms. Taylor’s were. If there was a problem…” I let things trail off, wondering if he’d hesitate.

  “No, they seem to be fine, thanks,” he said breezily. “There’s no need for you to keep her company. I’ll walk her down there if you like while you wait here with Ms. Adams.”

  Lexy began to protest, but cut herself short and waved Heather on when she apparently caught the message I was trying to send her without speaking. Once Heather and Fernandez were out of the room she came closer to where Linnette and I stood. “All right, explain.”

  “I’m pretty sure I know what this is all about. When we were coming to the office here, I spotted the care facility staff member I told you about. If anybody had seen who went in and out of Dennis’s room in the fifteen minutes or so that really matter, it would have been her.”

  “Ah. And something she’s said really did make the detective think it must be Heather. But as we decided last night, it can’t be a real good look she got at whoever this was, and she can’t be sure it was Heather. I’d have to guess that means she saw the back of whoever she saw, or a real quick view otherwise.”

  “Makes sense,” Linnette said. “I might just mosey up the hallway and see what’s going on. Maybe even fix my lipstick in the ladies’ room nearest that hallway.”

  I was dying to go with her, but that was going to be way too obvious. For now I needed to stay away from that bit of action, as far away as Heather did. If Fernandez had any suspicions that Heather could possibly be guilty, we didn’t want to fan the flames. “Hurry back,” I told her. “It’s going to be a long wait until we hear something.”

  “Wonder how the detective will feel about us using this office to pray in,” Lexy said. “Because I don’t know about you, but I think that’s the best use of our time.” I couldn’t agree with her more, so we prayed very quietly together as long as everyone else was gone.

  By the time Linnette made her way back to the detectives’ waiting area, she looked like the cat that ate the canary instead of a woman who just fixed her lipstick.

  “That took longer than any makeup-fixing I’ve ever seen,” I told her. I’d about prayed myself out, and started on a little worrying for good measure, by the time she came back. I knew it was foolish, and my time would have been better spent praying some more. Knowing it and doing it, however, are still two different things with me. At least I can recognize when I’m falling down on the job now, anyway. I figure it’s a start in this faith-walk business.

  “I think we’re okay,” she said. Heather was sitting down, having gotten tired of pacing around the room. “And I don’t think Lexy is going to have to call that friend of hers.” She sat down and patted Heather on the arm. “This is all going to work out.”

  “What makes you say that? It has to be something good for you to be smiling that much,” I said, sitting down on the other side of Heather where I could hear whatever Linnette had to say to her.

  “While I was in the ladies’ room, the woman you pointed out to us earlier came in with her friend and without he
r police escort. Even Jeannie the receptionist wasn’t with them. So I slipped into a stall and closed the door where I could overhear what they were saying without them watching me. They talked for several minutes, and I’m pretty sure that Señora Rodriguez is certain that you’re not the person she saw.”

  “What did she say?” Heather asked. She looked limp with relief.

  “Just be glad you’ve kept yourself up while you’re expecting this baby, honey.” Linnette patted her arm again. “According to the detective’s main witness you have too pequeño a nalgas to be the person she saw.”

  “What?” Heather and I said in chorus.

  Linnette grinned again. “You look too skinny from the back. She’s pretty sure that the person she saw coming out of Dennis’s room was a pregnant woman, and she’s almost positive that the lady in question was blond, or at least had light-colored hair. But whoever she saw, her, uh caboose was wider than yours, Heather.”

  “And that’s not something I could have changed in a week, for sure. At least not from wider to skinnier at this point in my life,” Heather said, smiling herself now.

  “Funny, that’s just what Señora Rodriguez and her companion, who seems to be her daughter-in-law, were saying.”

  Detective Fernandez probably thought we’d all finally gone the rest of the distance around the bend when he came into the waiting room and we were all giggling with our heads together. But then, he didn’t have high expectations from our sanity to begin with—except maybe about Linnette—so perhaps it wasn’t a problem.

  He definitely looked like he’d expected other news from his witness. The tightness around his face was back, making him look again like a man with a perpetual migraine. Lexy, walking a little bit behind him, was smiling as broadly as she dared.

  “Thank you for coming down so promptly to redo your fingerprints, Ms. Taylor. And I appreciate you bringing your attorney, even though it appears that isn’t going to be necessary after all. If I have any more questions for any of you, I’ll call you. You’re free to go.” He said that last sentence with a finality that made it sound more like “and get out of here before I change my mind.”