Till The Old Men Die (The Jeri Howard Mystery Series Book 2)

by Janet Dawson

  I didn’t tell Felice that her brother was playing out the same role of murder suspect over in San Francisco. She was only half right about Dolores Cruz. Dolly was greedy, but she and Felice both shared the desire to get even with Max Navarro for real or imagined sins, just as Lito Manibusan wanted justice for the death of his father. All three of them had succeeded, though at a cost each had not imagined. Maximiliano Navarro was the sort of man who engendered that kind of passion. Now the headlines Felice spoke of were being written. Max Navarro’s chickens were coming home to roost, a whole flock of them.

  I reached for the phone for the second time in eight hours, wondering when I would ever get a chance to sleep.

  Twenty-nine

  “NO MORE NIGHTMARES?” I ASKED MY FATHER AFTER he’d fixed dinner for me. We were in the living room of his town house, cups of coffee in hand. It was the night after Felice Navarro was arrested for the murder of Dolores Cruz, and her brother and his accomplice for the murder of Lito Manibusan. The newspapers and local TV were full of the story, and I’d been ignoring calls from reporters for the past thirty-six hours.

  He looked at me from his favorite chair, green eyes shielded by blue-gray plastic. He had a new pair of glasses to replace those broken last week when Dolly pushed him down the stairs at Cal State Hayward and stole his briefcase. This new color made his face look subtly different. His sprained wrist was still wrapped, but the bruise on his left side was fading and he could walk without a limp.

  “Nightmares,” Dad said with a smile, clarifying and qualifying as professors will. “I had a few bad dreams right after I found Lito’s body, but they went away. Let’s just say that when all of this most recent stuff cropped up, my sleep was a bit uneasy.”

  I kicked off my shoes and stretched out my legs on the sofa, taking a sip of my coffee before setting it on the end table. My sleep had been troubled, too. I didn’t think I’d ever forget the sight of Dolly’s body. The reminder of violent death also underscored the preciousness of life.

  “Max Navarro has a lot of clout,” I told him. “On both sides of the Pacific Ocean. I don’t think he’ll use it to help Felice. He doesn’t care about her. She didn’t wipe Dolly’s condo down as carefully as she thought. The police found her prints in the bathroom. Besides, she’s confessed to Dolly’s murder. The evidence against Rick Navarro and Eddie Villegas is circumstantial, although Inspector Cobb says the police talked to the staff at the St. Francis who worked the Navarro banquet that night. Turns out a busboy saw Rick Navarro in the men’s room, washing blood off his cuff. Cobb’s hoping Eddie will turn on Rick, but I don’t think that will happen. Not if I understand what’s meant by compadrazgo and utang na loob. Kinship and debts, all tangled together, reaching back years.” I picked up my coffee cup. “I guess I’ll let SFPD and the D.A. worry about making their case, and take comfort in all the bad press Max is getting.”

  My father smiled and shifted in his chair. “I had a nice long talk with your mother. I assured her that my aches and pains were diminishing and I even explained that it was I who involved you in a murder case, not the other way around. She’d like it if you’d come to Monterey for a visit. You haven’t been down in a while.”

  “I know,” I said, hiding behind the coffee cup. “I’ll schedule a weekend soon.”

  Dad nodded. “So, what about this young man you’ve been seeing, Lito’s nephew Alex? I met him at the funeral, but I don’t remember him. Have we got a romance in the offing?”

  “Hey, I’ve already got one mother,” I protested, “and she quizzes me plenty.” I got to my feet and headed in the direction of the kitchen. “Do you want a refill on coffee?”

  He nodded and handed me his cup. In the kitchen, as I poured coffee, I reflected that I was avoiding the question. I didn’t know what was going on between Alex and me, except that I was fixing dinner for him on Saturday night. That was a wait-and-see situation. I returned to the living room and handed Dad his cup. Then, on impulse, I leaned forward and kissed him on the top of the head. “What was that for?” he said with a grin.

  “General purposes, of a fatherly-daughterly nature.”

  * * *

  Abigail stalked across the living room carpet. She leapt up onto the sofa and deposited the yellow mouse in my lap. Then she sat back and looked pleased with herself.

  “Thank you so much,” I told her, stroking the top of her head as she purred with a loud rumble. With my other hand I picked up the fuzzy yarn corpse, soggy where the cat had held it in her mouth. Holding it by its tail, I twirled it in the air a couple of times and lobbed it toward the dining room, where Alex and I had finished dinner. I scored a direct hit on Alex, who was en route from kitchen to living room, bearing a glass of wine in each hand.

  “You’re supposed to yell incoming,” he said, handing me one glass as Abigail jumped off the sofa and went thumping after her toy. “What is that thing?”

  “Abigail’s yellow mouse. She stalls it every night. Then she leaves it at various places in the apartment so I can step on it with my bare feet.” I’d almost used the word “kill” to describe what my cat did with her toy, but my recent encounters with the grim reality of death made the word seem trivial when used to describe what happened to an inanimate object.

  He sat down, his arm stretched out behind me. We watched as Abigail seized the yellow mouse by the scruff of its neck and headed off in the direction of the bedroom, making deep yowls in her throat.

  “Maybe it’s the color,” he said, watching her go.

  “Cats don’t see colors. I think it’s the texture. Of course, there’s catnip inside.”

  We sat in companionable silence for a moment, sipping wine and ignoring the dinner dishes as we had avoided talking about Dr. Manibusan and the Navarros since Alex arrived a couple of hours earlier bearing a bottle of wine and the flowers that stood in a glass vase in the middle of the table. Instead, we talked about going to Kimball’s East in Emeryville to hear some jazz next Saturday night and the upcoming classic movie series at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland.

  “I heard the judge denied Rick bail,” he said finally, sipping his wine.

  “Yes. Max pitched a fit, but the D.A. convinced the judge that Rick would be on the first plane to Manila if he got out of jail. Eddie Villegas has such a track record that the judge just laughed at his lawyer. The case is getting less circumstantial, by the way. I talked to Inspector Cobb this morning. He checked Rick Navarro’s fingerprints against that partial print on the battery found at the scene of Lito’s murder. And guess what?”

  “They match,” Alex said. We saluted each other with our wineglasses.

  “Rick’s attorney is trying to blame it all on Eddie,” I continued, “so maybe there is a chance Eddie will give evidence against Rick, which would help. By the time the lawyers plea-bargain, who knows what will happen?”

  “I hope they can convict them. Uncle Lito deserves a little justice.”

  “What about the World War Two deaths in San Ygnacio?” I asked. “How is that playing back in Manila?”

  Alex laughed. “I talked to Uncle Javier yesterday. He says the whole thing is a big scandal. The newspapers got hold of the transcript of the tape and printed it. Some of the politicians are even talking about having an investigation. Uncle Lito would have loved it.” He stopped and shook his head. “Max Navarro will probably run for president anyway. And a lot of people will vote for him. Am I being cynical?”

  “Yes. I’ll join you. Greed and power always make me cynical.” I raised my glass to my lips.

  “What will happen to Felice?” Alex asked.

  “Max has disassociated himself from her, as I knew he would, but her ex-husband got her a lawyer. That’s probably a plea-bargain situation, too.” I glanced at him. “I thought Felice was just a fling that didn’t mean anything.”

  “Felice was a mistake,” he said. He drained his wineglass and reached across me to set it on the end table. “I was using her to get back at Rick Navarro for t
aking my wife away from me. Of course, he wasn’t really taking. Nina wanted to leave. And I didn’t care enough about the marriage to keep her from going. So I used Felice.”

  “There’s some truth to what you say,” I told him, looking into his dark eyes. “You can’t take all the blame, though, only part of it. The seeds of what Felice did were planted a long time ago.”

  “So it’s over,” Alex said.

  “It’ll never be over. Not till the old men die. That’s what you told me at the fiesta. It’s a simplistic statement, and somewhat sexist, but I often feel as though the world is run by old men.”

  “Trouble is, there are a lot of old men out there. And Max Navarro is no different from the rest of them.”

  “Trouble is, Alex, that there are always young men like Rick who are eager to take the old men’s places. That’s what perpetuates the system.”

  “So what do we do about it?”

  “We have to stop being cynical.”

  “That’s what Javier would say. I suppose that’s why he keeps working to change things back in the Philippines, even if I don’t approve of his methods.”

  We sat in silence for a moment. Then I finished my wine and set the glass aside. “We haven’t solved the problems of the world this evening. We never do, just talking about them. We have to act. I suppose we should concentrate on cleaning up messes that are closer to home. Local politics, for example, or the dinner dishes.” I started to get up, but he stopped me.

  “Wouldn’t you rather sit here and neck?” I looked at him, and his mouth curved in that slow smile I liked.

  “Are you still trying to get me into bed?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. He switched off the table lamp and reached for me.

  About the Author

  JANET DAWSON’S first Jeri Howard novel, Kindred Crimes, won the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First Private Eye Novel Contest. It was nominated for Shamus, Anthony, and Macavity awards in the Best First Novel category. In addition to the Jeri Howard series, she has written numerous short stories, including Macavity winner “Voice Mail,” and Shamus nominee “Slayer Statute.” For more information on Janet Dawson and her books, check her website at www.janetdawson.com.