by Holly Plum
The tortilla-making process was involved but not especially difficult with practice. Mari's Abuela kneaded a mixture of flour and salt, occasionally adding water until it was smooth all over. Because she didn’t like to rush, this normally took about twenty minutes with each batch. Once the mixture had been allowed to rest for another ten minutes, Mari pressed the dough into several, thin, circular shapes. Mari then fried the tortillas. An hour later, a nice pile of tortillas accumulated on a plate at the edge of the stove.
Flipping tortillas wasn’t especially labor-intensive, so Mari had ample time to reflect on the events of the last couple of days. She seemed to have spooked her brothers with her talk of Dad going to jail. It was unlikely they would cave in immediately, but she had persuaded them that she was thinking only of the good of the family. Whatever their faults, Mari's brothers loved their family. Maybe in a few days one or both of them would tell her what was going on.
Mari hoped Alex and David hadn’t been up to any serious mischief. But until her brothers were up-front with her about where they’d been, Mari wouldn’t be able to trust them. Trust was essential if Mari wanted to succeed at saving her family's reputation. Mari needed to unite the whole family in this endeavor, but that was impossible as long as certain members of the family were keeping secrets from each other.
Mari paused as she realized she had let one tortilla cook for too long on one side. It had browned too much, and she would have to throw it out. That’s how things were, lately. She was having trouble focusing on the day-to-day needs of the restaurant because her quest to find the killer had become all-consuming. Mari knew that her father would be devastated if anything happened to the family restaurant. In fact, the entire family would have a hard time coping. Lito Bueno's Mexican Restaurant represented a lifetime of hard work and life savings. Mari had to figure out what happened to Steve Wilson before things took a turn for the worst.
Mari picked up the plate of tortillas and set it down next to her Abuela. She was dimly conscious that people were arguing all around her. Faintly, as though from a great distance, she heard her father complaining about Tabasco being in the restaurant again. Her Abuela was telling him in Spanish that a pair of her shoes had gone missing. Mari's grandmother seemed to think it was very important that they knew this. She thought it might be connected to the mystery of who had killed Steve Wilson.
There were times when the demands of the restaurant and being surrounded by so many people got to be too much, and this was one of those times. Mari needed to shut herself in the bathroom and think. If she did enough thinking, maybe she could figure this out on her own. Mari excused herself in a faint voice and left the kitchen.
But even before she had reached the door of the women’s restroom, another mystery presented itself. Someone had left the back door of the restaurant wide open.
CONTINUE READING …
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