Hot Schemes

by Sherryl Woods

  “I’ve checked out every single place Paredes has been known to go in the past and I don’t mean by calling. I spent hours driving to these places to see personally whether he was there. I did find his wife and children, however.”

  “Where?”

  “They’re staying with her sister. She claims to have no idea where her husband is. She says she hasn’t seen or spoken to him since they left the Westchester house. She reminds me of those Mafia wives who claim not to have a clue about their husbands’ activities.”

  In this instance, Molly could believe it. Combined with the danger of having too many people know his whereabouts, Paredes would also have a very macho attitude toward his wife’s need to know anything except what was necessary for his pleasure or the care of his children. All of which gave her an idea.

  “Where does this sister live?”

  Hazelton gave her the address in southwest Dade. “You going to see her?”

  Molly cast a look at Michael and wondered what he’d have to say about it. “I’m going to try,” she said grimly.

  He glanced at her as she hung up. “Try what?”

  “To convince you to make a detour and let me talk with Paredes’s wife.”

  “You know where she is?”

  Molly nodded. “Walt says she doesn’t know where her husband is.”

  “Yet you want to see her. Why?”

  “Because like Tía Pilar, she may know more than she is willing to say.”

  “And you think you have ways of persuading her to talk, when her husband’s life might be at risk?”

  Molly found his derisive tone irritating. “I know this will come as a shock to your ego, Detective, but I do have a way with people. My presence will be far less threatening to her than yours or even Walt’s.”

  “Is this one of those woman-to-woman things?”

  “Careful, O’Hara, your macho heritage is showing.”

  He opened his mouth to reply, then snapped it shut again. Finally he said, “What’s the address?”

  They found the tiny tract house off the turnpike just north of Homestead in an area that had been hard hit by Hurricane Andrew. Evidence of the violent storm was still visible in houses that remained gutted, their roofs sheared off by the powerful winds, their walls collapsed. Molly was shocked at how much remained just as it had been in the days immediately following the hurricane. She stared at it in openmouthed amazement.

  “It’s been nearly two years,” she said.

  “Many of these places were owned by people barely making ends meet,” Michael reminded her. “Some had no insurance to rebuild. Others took the money and walked away, refusing to come back after the terror of that August night and the days of hardship that followed while they waited for relief efforts.”

  “I just didn’t realize that it would still be like this in some places.”

  “What’s that address again?”

  When she’d given it to him, he made a final turn into a street that was like a patchwork scene of before and after. For every two or three houses that had been rebuilt, there was another one that stood as testimony to the storm’s destructiveness.

  María Consuela Fernández, Paredes’s sister-in-law according to Walt, lived on a cul-de-sac at the end of the block in one of the houses that was livable, though it still bore signs of damage. One large picture window in front remained boarded over. The paint was badly chipped and peeling. There was even a terrible gash in the stucco exterior where some piece of flying debris had rammed the house at high speed.

  But the grass was neatly cut and flowers bloomed in a bright border along the sidewalk. A new tree, barely five feet tall and skinny, its trunk still held in place by stakes and an elaborate arrangement of wires, was a testament to faith in the future.

  Extracting Michael’s promise to sit tight, Molly made her way to the front door through a clutter of tricycles and abandoned toys, the same clutter they’d seen outside Paredes’s house. Trepidation combined with anticipation as she rang the bell.

  From inside she heard shouts of “no, niña, no!” just as the door opened. Molly looked down into the face of a chubby toddler whose big brown eyes gazed back solemnly. A thin, exhausted-looking woman skidded to a halt on the tile floor behind the child and scooped her up, clutching her protectively.

  “Señora Paredes?” Molly said, wondering at how much younger the woman was than she’d anticipated. Perhaps a second marriage for Paredes, she mused.

  There was an instant’s panic in the woman’s eyes that was answer enough. She started to push the door closed, but Molly held it open by bracing a shoulder against it.

  “Please. I really need to speak with you. My name is Molly DeWitt. I’m not a reporter. I don’t work for the police.”

  The woman’s suspicion didn’t lessen, but she did seem to relax slightly. Since it didn’t seem likely that she was going to be invited in for tea, Molly decided to press on with her plea right where she was.

  “May I tell you a story?” She didn’t wait for a response before going on. “An old woman of whom I am very fond is very sad. She desperately misses her husband, to whom she has been married for more than forty years. He left home to go on a fishing trip several days ago and he has not returned. No one knows anything about his disappearance. It is the not knowing that breaks her heart. If her husband is dead, it would be better for her to know that. If he is not, then she would be at peace. I know that you can sympathize, because I am sure there have been times of uncertainty in your life.”

  The child in Señora Paredes’s arms whimpered. Distractedly she put her down and the girl ran off into the house. “Why do you tell me this?” she asked Molly.

  “Because you could help.”

  “How? I do not even know this woman.”

  “But her husband and your husband were very close, both in Cuba and here. Your husband might help us to locate this old man and return him to his family.”

  “I do not know where my husband is,” she said.

  The response was emphatic, but it sounded automatic, almost rehearsed. Molly regarded her intently. “Sometimes women know more than they are supposed to know,” she suggested quietly.

  Señora Paredes’s gaze faltered. It was only a flicker, but Molly knew she had been right. “Please,” she implored. “I mean your husband no harm. I just need the answers he might have.”

  “I understand. I sympathize with your friend, but my husband has responsibilities elsewhere,” she said, her gaze now locked with Molly’s. “I cannot interfere with this.”

  Molly couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as if the woman was willing her to interpret what she was saying, to guess the answers she sought from the enigmatic response actually given. She played the words again in her mind. Responsibilities elsewhere triggered a faint, nagging sensation.

  Suddenly the information Walt Hazelton had given her the day before came to mind. An invasion of Cuba, whether full-scale or just a tentative raid, was being staged from Key West. And this house where Señora Paredes and her children waited was squarely between the family’s house in Westchester and the Florida Keys.

  “He has gone to Key West, hasn’t he?” Molly said.

  “No sé,” the woman said as she hurriedly shut the door.

  But in that instant before it closed, Molly caught the truth in her eyes.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  “Key West!” Michael said incredulously, when Molly joined him in the car again. “You want to drive all the way to Key West to check out some idiotic intuition of yours that that’s where Paredes is?”

  “What happened to all that talk about my wisdom and intelligence?”

  “Logic,” he said tersely.

  “Yours or mine?” she shot back. “My logic tells me that Paredes is down there with his band of commandos, controlling the entire operation.”

  “It’s a long way to go on a wild-goose chase.”

  Molly wasn’t about to be intimidated by his obvious lac
k of faith. “If you don’t want to make the drive, then take me home to get my car and I’ll go on my own.”

  Their gazes clashed. Molly refused to be the first to back down. Michael finally sighed. “You’re convinced of this, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then we’ll go to Key West,” he said, turning back onto the turnpike heading south toward Homestead and Key Largo. “Call Felipe again and tell him where we’re going. Ask him to concentrate his search down there to try and pinpoint where Paredes might be. Let’s just pray that he isn’t on a boat bound for Cuba.”

  • • •

  Between Felipe’s sources at the police department and Walt Hazelton’s contacts, Molly and Michael were able to come up with a half-dozen addresses in the tiny resort town of Key West of men known to be Cuban activists, who might be harboring Paredes if he was still in Florida. Just ninety miles from Cuba, the southernmost city in the U.S. had long been a haven for Cuban immigrants fleeing oppression, first from Spain and more recently from Castro’s brand of communism. The first arrivals on the boat lifts from Mariel had landed here before being processed by Immigration and released to family members.

  Arriving in Key West in early afternoon, Molly and Michael went from place to place, coming up empty each time. Either all were at work, which was certainly a logical assumption, given the time of day, or these activists were gathered together at some sort of central control point for whatever commando operation they were conducting. Molly was betting on the latter scenario.

  “Maybe so,” Michael agreed. “But I am not driving around the city looking for such a meeting. I’m starving. Let’s have lunch and think this through.”

  At a restaurant on Duval Street, they sat in an outside garden and considered the possibilities.

  “A Cuban restaurant, the old Cuban cigar factory, the San Carlos Theater,” Molly suggested. “The San Carlos would be the symbolic place, since that’s where Cuban independence from Spain was declared almost a hundred years ago.”

  Michael appeared to weigh the alternatives, then shook his head. “Too obvious and too public.”

  “Something at the marina?”

  “Why there?”

  “To be close to the boats being launched as part of the raid,” she speculated.

  Michael nodded thoughtfully. “Possible, but I would think Paredes would want to maintain some distance from the boats. He would want it to appear that they’re leaving as usual for a fishing trip or a pleasure cruise. I doubt he’d want any hint that an armed flotilla is taking off in violation of U.S. law or that he’s involved with it.”

  “Call the local police and see if there are places and people they keep an eye on for illegal immigration activities.”

  “Good idea,” he said. He stopped a waiter, found out where the pay phone was, and went inside.

  While he was gone, Molly studied the clientele of the restaurant. Most were Anglos, a mix of locals on a lunch break from work, and tourists with cameras and street maps. The help, however, appeared to be largely Hispanic. Since the typical Cuban residents of Key West weren’t eating lunch here, she wondered where they did tend to congregate. It was true that Paredes and his associates might not do their plotting in public, but surely they had to eat out occasionally.

  The next time their waitress came by, Molly asked her about it. “Is there someplace in particular you go with your friends for Cuban food?”

  The young woman named several restaurants, describing each of them. All sounded as if they were the kinds of casual places frequented by young couples and families. Molly grinned at her. “And your parents? Where would they go?”

  “Casa Rolando,” she said at once. “For special celebrations. For a simple evening with friends, however, they would go to the same places I mentioned.”

  “Can you tell me where they are?”

  By the time Michael got back to the table, Molly had a new list of addresses. He had a similar list. Naturally the lists weren’t compatible, which meant making a decision about which leads to pursue.

  “Where to first?” she asked, when she’d explained her theory. “I’d like to at least try one of the restaurants. I can tell the owner I’m writing a travel article on Key West restaurants frequented by well-known people and ask who has dined there.”

  “And you’ll just casually work Paredes’s name into the conversation?” Michael said with blatant skepticism.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it is not …”

  “If you accuse me of being illogical again, I’ll dump the entire bottle of ketchup over your head.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, then. Let’s just say it is not exactly an orthodox investigating technique.”

  “So what?”

  “Indeed. So what? Okay, amiga, I’m a desperate man. We’ll try it.”

  Molly discarded the upscale Casa Rolando in favor of the more casual spots on the theory that Paredes might figure he’d be less conspicuous there. Three restaurants later they had come up with nothing, unless her own case of caffeine jitters counted. Café Cubano vendors could probably make a fortune on university campuses around final exam time.

  “One more,” she bargained when Michael wanted to start checking out his own list of suspected hangouts.

  “One more,” he agreed resignedly.

  The one they chose was only a block from the water and a major marina. Though it was late in the afternoon, the restaurant was still jammed, the air inside thick with a haze of cigar smoke despite health warnings and ordinances to protect against the hazards of secondary smoke.

  Though he had dutifully waited in the car on the earlier tries, this time Michael insisted on coming along. “You can say I’m your photographer.”

  “Where’s your camera?”

  “I’m just on a preliminary scouting expedition with you. I’ll return later for a formal photo shoot.”

  “Sounds like a pretty complicated ruse.”

  “And yours isn’t?”

  Molly rolled her eyes. “You have a point.”

  Unfortunately, after all their planning, the owner was not on the premises. The hostess, however, was a chatty young woman in her mid-twenties who clearly appreciated Michael’s finer qualities. Molly wondered how he felt about being examined as a sex object. Then she decided he was probably used to it. At any rate, the hostess agreed to join them as soon as the crowd thinned out.

  A waiter brought them both coffee. This time Molly insisted on decaf, which drew startled looks from the waiter and Michael. Twenty minutes later the hostess returned. She tugged a chair closer to Michael’s before collapsing wearily onto it. She mostly collapsed in his direction. Another inch or two and he’d have to prop her up.

  Before Molly could open her mouth to ask a single question, Michael jumped in with the announcement that he was the one doing the freelance travel piece. Molly gaped at the theft of her planned scenario. She had to admit, though, that the hostess—Lara Veciana-Peña—probably wouldn’t have taken her eyes off Michael long enough to answer any question Molly asked. By contrast, she’d probably tell the sexy detective secrets she’d kept hidden from the rest of the world for her entire life. She ran red-tipped fingers through luxuriant shoulder-length black hair in a provocative gesture as she listened intently to every word that tripped from his tongue.

  “Celia Cruz was in here once. Is that the sort of thing you mean?” she asked in a voice that was totally unaccented. Molly guessed she’d been born and educated right here in Key West, perhaps of immigrant parents, but more influenced by her American friends.

  “Exactly,” Michael said, beaming as if she’d just given the correct answer to the trickiest question in final Jeopardy.

  If this kept up, Molly thought she might be sick.

  Lara offered up a few more celebrities in an effort to earn more of Michael’s praise.

  “What about writers? Politicians?” Molly asked, hoping to inch closer to the purpose of this interrogation.

>   Lara blinked and gazed at Molly as if she’d just noticed her presence. “Sure. Jeb Bush, you know, the ex-President’s son? He came in one night with some Cuban friends. And lots of writers live right here in Key West. They’re in all the time, mostly during the season, though not this time of year. Hemingway used to live here in Key West, but of course he’s dead now.” She named several others who were still living. Michael dutifully wrote them down.

  “I was told that a Cuban looking for truly authentic food from his homeland would come here,” Michael said. “In fact, the person who gave me the name of this restaurant said his friends from Miami often drive all the way down just to have a meal here.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Lara said vaguely. “I don’t know if they’re famous or anything. I’ve never heard of ‘em, anyway.”

  “Are there people like this, though, on a list, so that when they call you always hold a reservation for them?”

  “Sure, we have a priority customer list. My boss is real sensitive to that sort of thing.”

  “Could I see it?” Michael asked. “I think that’s exactly the sort of thing I need for the article.”

  For the first time, Lara looked uneasy. “I’m not so sure he’d want it published.”

  Michael put his hand reassuringly over hers. Or maybe he just figured he’d give her a thrill, Molly thought in disgust as she saw the girl’s eyes turn bright with something that she doubted was intelligence. She recognized lust when she saw it. She was guilty of it enough herself in Michael’s presence.

  “I promise not to print it as is or to reveal how I got the information,” he said, gazing deeply into her eyes. “Just let me have a peek at it.”

  Apparently the girl read the promise of greater intimacy in Michael’s expression or in his touch, because she practically ran to the reservation book.

  “That was disgusting,” Molly said under her breath.

  He grinned at her unrepentantly. “Worked, didn’t it?”

  “Just don’t be surprised when she turns up in Miami looking for love.”