Zero. Unless . . .
Vega flipped the girl’s drawing to the ad on back: Want to sell your things on eBay?
He thought about the fuzzy Pepto-Bismol-colored jacket that he saw downstairs the other day. It looked just like the one Joy used to wear. Exactly like it, to be precise.
Dolan would have checked, wouldn’t he? Then again, what was there to check? Wendy had no receipt. His ex-wife would have bagged up the clothes and then assumed . . . Of course she would have assumed . . .
“The woman who helped deliver Emilio—she lives in Lake Holly?”
“Yes. But please, Detective—let me speak to her first. I’m sure she’ll help you if she can.”
Vega wasn’t going to wait around to find out.
Chapter 22
Wendy’s neighborhood looked nearly deserted on a Thursday at noon. Vega parked his truck in her driveway and walked up to her side door. It was a simple door, nothing like the double-height front entrance door with its raised, hand-crafted walnut panels and etched-glass windows running down either side. Vega had never stood at that door, never felt the cool grandeur of its welcome. Even when he picked up Joy for a father/daughter evening out, he never considered himself invited. He was an occasional inconvenience borne of necessity—similar in rank to the plumber and deserving of the same reception.
He rang the side doorbell and waited. Rosa opened the door.
“Señor,” she said, surprised. She wore black glasses with narrow frames that sat low across the bridge of her nose, so she had to look over the tops to see him. “Joy is not here.” She spoke to Vega in Spanish. They always conversed in Spanish.
“Yes, I know. Actually, I came to speak to you.”
“Me?” She touched a hand to her chest. She had sturdy hands with long fingers that reminded Vega with a pang of his mother. For all the times he’d chatted with Rosa Soliz as he waited to pick up Joy, this was the first time he’d given her more than a passing glance.
“May I come in?”
A small frown wrinkled her lips and formed little pouches along her jaw below her prominent cheekbones. She ran a hand from her widow’s peak of graying hair to the bun that held it tightly in back.
“The señora—she said it’s okay?”
Of course not. Wendy would never say it’s okay. Last night was probably the first time Vega had ever stepped into his ex-wife’s house beyond the little mudroom off the kitchen, and Wendy was as jumpy as a nesting sparrow. Did Wendy really think that while they were sitting there with Joy in tears and their $300-an-hour lawyer explaining the case, Vega was going to be sizing up her furniture and who was leaving messages on her answering machine? (Okay, maybe a little.)
“I just have a couple of things I really need your help on. It won’t take long.” He hoped to bypass the issue of Wendy. He didn’t want to lie. “I can stay in the kitchen if you’d like. I was in the kitchen last night when the lawyer was here,” he reminded her.
Rosa pressed her lips together and considered the request. She nodded and opened the door wider.
“Okay.” She said the word in English, the way Vega had seen her do when something wasn’t “okay,” but she just had to accept it. Okay, I stay late tonight. Okay, I fix the twins dinner. Okay, I hem Joy’s dress when the señora should really pay a tailor to do it.
Vega often cringed from the mudroom when he witnessed these little interchanges between Rosa and his ex-wife or daughter. Growing up, he’d had friends whose mothers and grandmothers were housekeepers and nannies. They often came home with stories of having to smile and say yes to ridiculous requests or thoughtless behaviors. The employers were usually decent people—even generous people. But they were clueless about how spoiled and self-centered they came across to their tired, poor, and overwhelmed help.
Worse, the mothers and grandmothers of his friends developed a double standard. The same behavior they tolerated and even indulged in their employers’ children made them furious in their own. His friend Henry Lopez once tracked dirt from a vacant lot where they’d been playing onto his mother’s living-room sofa (one reason Vega’s own mother covered hers in plastic). Señora Lopez, a housekeeper, beat Henry so hard with her rubber-soled chancletas that Vega saw the shoe outline on his friend’s legs the next day. After what Vega saw as a child, he could never be comfortable with an employer/servant relationship. Ever.
“Would you like some coffee, señor? Something to eat?”
“No, thank you.” He pulled a stool out from under the center island counter. “May I?”
Rosa nodded.
Vega straddled the stool and rested his elbows on the counter. Sunlight streamed in from skylights overhead and lit up a vase of white hydrangeas next to him. On the surrounding walls were framed photographs of the family on vacation. Seeing Wendy and Joy in those pictures filled Vega with a deep sense of loss. He wondered if he’d be staring at a photo of Adele in D.C. one day and wondering, as he did now, if he’d ever had the power to make it different.
“I’m very sorry about what is happening to Joy,” said Rosa.
“We all are,” said Vega. “I know you spoke to the police yesterday.”
“I told them I don’t know the girl. I’m sorry.”
Vega folded his hands under his chin. “Detective Dolan—can be very intimidating. Perhaps now that it’s just you and me—”
“I would have told him if I knew the girl,” Rosa insisted. “I don’t.”
Vega pulled the Reilly girl’s drawing out of a pocket in his jacket. “But you know this.” He flipped over the paper to the eBay ad and smoothed it out on the counter in front of Rosa.
“Dominga gave you this?” she asked.
“Yes.” Sort of.
Rosa swallowed. Her eyes turned glassy. “I meant no harm.”
“I need you to tell me what happened.”
“The señora was going to throw it out.”
“Huh?” Vega leaned forward. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“It seemed like such a waste. I didn’t think anyone would find out.”
“You didn’t think anyone would find out?”
“Please don’t tell Señora Wendy.”
“Wait”—Vega’s head was spinning—“are we talking about the same thing?”
“The clothes. That the señora gave me to put in the Goodwill bin. I gave them to Dominga to sell. That’s what you’re asking me, isn’t it?”
“I’m asking you about Dominga’s baby.”
Rosa frowned. “I didn’t give her any baby clothes. Did she deliver already?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I haven’t seen Dominga in months.”
Vega massaged his forehead. He’d come in search of one piece of the puzzle and ended up with an entirely different piece. He folded Dominga’s ad and stuffed it back into the pocket of his jacket, where it resided with the flyer on the dead teenager. He still had Baby Mercy’s photo on his cell phone as well. He carried dead people with him everywhere these days.
“So let me get this straight,” he said to Rosa. “Wendy gave you several bags of Joy’s old clothes to put in the Goodwill bin and you gave them to Dominga to sell on eBay instead?”
“I didn’t steal,” said Rosa. “I would never steal.”
“Why didn’t you just ask Wendy for the clothes? She’d have given them to you.”
“Yes. To give to my children and grandchildren in El Salvador. To wear. But what they need is money, not clothes. How could I ask to profit from what belongs to her? It would be—uncomfortable—to ask such a thing.”
“But not uncomfortable to sell them behind her back?”
“She never knew. It was harmless, señor. Please don’t tell her—”
“Why didn’t you tell Detective Dolan that you never put the clothes in the Goodwill bin?”
“Because he wanted to know only about Joy’s hoodie and quilt. Dominga didn’t take those things. So what was the point of telling?”
“What
happened to them?”
“I gave everything she didn’t want to charity.”
“So wait—you tossed them in the Goodwill bin?” If that was the case, Vega was back to where he started.
“No,” said Rosa, “I donated them to Our Lady of Sorrows. The big Catholic church in town. They have a program there for the homeless called Helping Hand.”
Mano Amiga. Vega had heard of it.
“So you see?” said Rosa. “I didn’t steal anything. You don’t have to tell the señora, do you? She’ll fire me.”
“Wendy’s not going to fire you.” Vega took out his notepad. “So you dropped everything off at the church?”
“No. Around the corner.”
“I’m not following.”
“The head of Helping Hand lives here. In The Farms. I walked the things over to her. Your daughter tutors their son, so I thought no one would mind—”
“Wait—” said Vega. “So you gave those things to—”
“Esmeralda Gonzalez. Don Charlie’s wife.”
Chapter 23
Esme Gonzalez was young—much younger than her husband. Her jet-black hair was pulled into a high ponytail, her eyelashes were thick with mascara, and when she parted her pink lips, Vega noticed a mouth full of porcelain veneers. Yet for all her attention to American notions of beauty, there was something traditionally Mexican about her. Perhaps it was the coquettish tilt of her head as she hung back in the doorway, the hesitant timbre of her voice, the way she never met Vega’s gaze head-on.
“Pardon, señora. I’m looking for my daughter, Joy. Is she here?” Vega already knew she was. That was his pretext for coming in the first place.
“She’s in the kitchen tutoring my son. Would you like me to get her?”
“Do you know when she’ll be finished?”
Esme looked at her watch. “She has another twenty minutes to go. But if you need her—?”
“No, please. I don’t want to interrupt. Would you mind if I waited for her inside?”
Esme ran a manicured hand along the sweep of her ponytail. Her bright pink lips drew in on themselves. Vega could see that strangers made her uncomfortable, but she was too polite to turn him away.
“Of course, señor. Come in.”
Vega stepped into the front hallway. The floor was tiled in green and white marble. A sweeping staircase billowed like silk beneath a crystal chandelier. To the right of the stairs stood a grouping of brightly colored vases in rainbow shades of hand-blown glass and painted terra-cotta. On the walls were large oil canvasses of rural hillsides and red tile-roofed houses. Vega was amazed that a home with young children in it could have such a museum-like feel.
“Would you like some coffee, señor?”
“Call me Jimmy. And no thanks, I’m good.”
His voice must have carried because at that moment, Joy poked her head out of the kitchen.
“Dad? What are you—?”
“Just wanted to talk to you a moment when you’re through. I’m happy to wait.”
The longer, the better.
Two boys, both about nine, came through the kitchen to ask Esme for something to drink. She looked momentarily overwhelmed. Vega guessed one was her son and the other a friend or cousin. He noted from the kitchen window that there were several more Hispanic-looking children in the yard—two younger ones sliding down the play-gym slide and a teenage girl sitting off to one side, knees curled up to her chest. There was something guarded and a little sad about her. Vega thought of Joy. Girls could be sulky and hard to read once they reached adolescence. Not that they were any easier to read afterward, either.
“I’ll make lemonade if you go outside and leave Christian to do his studies in peace,” Esme told the boys.
They nodded and disappeared. Vega followed Esme into the kitchen.
“I’ve got you on a bad day,” he said, switching to Spanish.
Esme gave a small nod of appreciation at the shift in tongues.
“Every day is like this,” she replied, also in Spanish. Her voice carried a level of fatigue that was absent from her body. Her skin was smooth, her makeup flawless. She wasn’t thin, but she carried her stockiness well, accentuating the curves and minimizing the excesses.
She pulled a glass pitcher out of a cupboard.
“You and your husband are very active in the community,” said Vega. “You do a great deal for people, I know.”
“We do what we can.”
Esme put the pitcher on the granite counter next to a spray of delicate pink orchids and a birdcage with two parakeets fluttering about, one with a blue breast and one with a green. When Vega was a boy, his mom did their wash at a Laundromat in the Bronx run by a lady who kept parakeets. Vega used to spend hours watching them. Aside from the foul-mouthed parrot who lived upstairs in their building, those birds were the only pets he’d ever experienced in his childhood. None of their landlords allowed dogs or cats.
Esme began spooning pink powdered lemonade into the pitcher. Vega tried hard to ignore the dirty looks from his daughter on the other side of the kitchen. For once, he was thankful Joy’s Spanish was limited. She wouldn’t know enough to stop him from what he had to do.
“Please, can you reach those cookies up there?” asked Esme, pointing to a high shelf. “I like to keep them somewhere where the children don’t get into them and eat too many.”
“Of course.” Vega pulled down a package of generic-looking chocolate-chip cookies. They didn’t look especially tempting to begin with.
“You know Rosa Soliz, right?” he began.
“She’s your wife’s”—Esme corrected herself—“your ex-wife’s—housekeeper, yes?”
“That’s her,” said Vega. “She tells me you run the homeless program at Our Lady of Sorrows.”
“Yes.” Esme measured out cold water from a dispenser on the door of her refrigerator. Vega waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.
“That must be a lot of work—feeding and clothing people. You must have a lot of help.”
“I have some,” said Esme. “But I do a lot of it.”
“You run the clothing drives? That’s a big job in itself, I suspect. All the sorting and cleaning.”
“We don’t clean donated items.”
“No?”
Esme poured the water into the pitcher of powdered lemonade. The water turned a pink not found in nature. “We assume people wash the clothes before they donate them, but we don’t have the resources to do it if they don’t. Goodwill and most thrift stores have the same policy.”
“Ah,” said Vega. “I didn’t know.” If nothing else, Esme’s statement would back up Joy’s assertions that she’d worn that hoodie, given it away, and her scent had remained for the state trooper’s dog to find.
“Rosa tells me she donated some of Joy’s things to your clothing drive maybe a month or two ago,” said Vega. “A black zippered hoodie and a flowered quilt. You wouldn’t happen to remember those items, would you?”
Esme stopped stirring the lemonade. “People donate things all the time. I can’t be expected to remember everything they claim to have given me.”
“I totally understand. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important, señora. Joy has told you I’m a police officer, I assume?”
From Esme’s blank expression it was clear that Vega’s name never came up in conversation, much less his occupation. Vega sometimes felt like an asterisk in his daughter’s life. He tried to brush back the hurt and plunge ahead while the moment was in his favor.
“A few days ago, a teenage girl was found dead wearing the hoodie I just described,” Vega explained. “No one knows who she is, including Joy. I thought perhaps you might be able to identify her.”
She frowned. “No. I don’t know any girl.”
Vega pulled a flyer of the girl out of a pocket of his jacket and began to unfold it across the counter. “Perhaps if you saw her—?”
“Please.” She waved it away. “That’s not necessary. Not here.”
“Perhaps in the other room?”
“I told you, I don’t know her.”
“Maybe your husband does?”
“I’m sure he doesn’t.”
“Could you show it to him? The police have a witness who saw her at your husband’s car wash here in Lake Holly. With her mother.”
“Her mother?”
“Maybe she was a local girl who had some troubles?”
“Once they get with a boy, it’s all troubles.”
“Get with a boy?”
“You know, pregnant.”
Vega stood very still with his hand resting on the crumpled flyer. “Do you have reason to believe she was pregnant?”
She turned away from him and wiped her hands on a towel. “I’m just saying with girls”—she sounded flustered—“that’s always the problem, isn’t it?”
“How about with this girl?”
“I don’t know. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She grabbed some plastic cups from a cabinet and put the cookies on a paper plate. She switched to English and spoke over her shoulder. “I think the lesson is over.”
“We just have one more page to do,” said Joy.
“It’s over! Your money is on the counter, Joy. Thank you.” She stuffed Vega’s flyer in a drawer. “I need to take these things to the children. I’m sure you and your daughter can find your way out.”
At the car, Joy could barely contain herself.
“What did you say to her, Dad?”
“Nothing.”
“I may not speak Spanish well, but I heard her tone of voice. You upset her. And probably got me fired! What did you do?”
“Nothing—I just asked if she knew the dead girl.”
“What? Why would you ask a thing like that?”
Vega hesitated. He couldn’t tell Joy all he knew, so he settled on the little bit that Rosa was likely to confess to her and Wendy anyway. “Rosa gave that hoodie and quilt of yours to Esme for Mano Amiga’s clothing drive.”
“Goodwill—Mano Amiga—what difference does it make? You sounded like you were accusing her of something. And you were doing it while I was in the room. You embarrassed me, Dad!”
A Blossom of Bright Light Page 19