Flour in the Attic

by Winnie Archer

  “You too, Johnny. You too.” She wasn’t much of a hugger, but she handed her cane off to me, stepped closer, and wrapped him up in a warm embrace. It was what they both needed, I realized. Mrs. Branford had been one of those extraordinary teachers who realized that kids learned, not because they were fascinated with the curriculum, but because they felt safe and loved and often because they’d made a real connection with a teacher who cared. More than anything, Mrs. Branford had worked at building those relationships with her students. It didn’t matter how many years ago she’d taught a student, that relationship would always remain.

  He stood back, masked the glint of emotion that had shown briefly on his face, and pointed his finger back and forth between us. “You’re together?”

  “That’s right. This is Ivy Culpepper,” Mrs. Branford said with a single nod in my direction.

  “Okay. Great. This way.” He led us to his open office space, holding out one of the chairs for her while she sat. It was only after Mrs. Branford was settled that he looked at me, held out his hand, and formally introduced himself. “Johnny Morales, Ms. Culpepper. Nice to meet you.”

  “You too.” I sat in the other free chair while he took his place back behind his desk. The collar of his shirt bunched slightly at his neck when he clasped his hands in front of him. The stark white made his olive skin take on a darker hue, and given it was getting on toward the end of the day, a five o’clock shadow had started to form along the sides of his face and chin. Bits of gray intermixed with the darker color of his hair gave him a weathered and wiser look than he might have had otherwise.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked. Even after the hug he and Mrs. Branford had shared, I could see that he was a no-nonsense kind of man. For an instant he’d let his feelings rise to the surface, but just as quickly, he pushed them back down to a place where he could manage them.

  “I’m thinking about doing some work around my house,” I said. I didn’t want to mislead him, so I quickly added, “But this is very preliminary. I’m not sure if I need to borrow to do it, or even if it’s financially feasible. I just bought the house recently, so taking on another loan may not be the smartest thing to do.”

  He nodded, his eyes pinching slightly at the outer edges as he thought. “I can’t say anything for sure until we look at your specific situation, but overextending yourself is generally not a good idea. You have steady income, I assume?”

  “Yeesss,” I said with a tinge of hesitation, but I didn’t elaborate. My wage from Yeast of Eden was nominal. I worked at the bread shop mostly because I wanted to, not for the money. Photography was where I drew most of my income, although it was still slow going at the moment. I earned steadily as a contributor to a stock photography website, my assets bringing in a decent monthly amount. My freelance work was irregular, at best, but it would be growing.

  I’d put nearly my entire savings into the house, and I dipped into what was left now and then to make ends meet. The bottom line was that Johnny Morales was right: I didn’t want to overextend myself.

  I shared a little bit about what I’d like to do to the house—add to the backyard landscape, remodel the master bathroom, and upgrade some of the other bathroom fixtures. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough that I had to carefully consider my options.

  He didn’t even need to think before responding to me. “You haven’t been there very long. I suggest you live there for a while before deciding on changes. It takes a while to adjust to a new house and to appreciate things the way they are. Give yourself time to do that before you start making changes. That’s my advice. Then, if you decide to make some changes, a second against your principal through the credit union is definitely an option.” He darted a quick glance around the credit union before continuing, more quietly. “There are other ways to go about it, too. When you’re ready, if that’s what you decide, we can talk the different options.”

  I had no idea what he meant, so I just nodded and smiled. “Mrs. Branford said you’d be able to give me sound advice. I appreciate that, Mr. Morales.”

  “Ivy is dating Miguel, Laura’s brother,” Mrs. Branford said, changing the subject.

  He nodded, but his face was expressionless. Was he always this serious, or were his feelings about his ex-wife’s death leaving him numb? “Laura’s a good girl. A good mother. She makes my son very happy. Can’t ask for more than that from a daughter-in-law.”

  “She seems like she is,” I said. Laura hadn’t always been my fan, nor I hers, but we’d hashed out our differences recently and were at a good place. I’d seen her with her children. Being a mom was a role she seemed made for. “I knew Marisol,” I said, transitioning the conversation to the reason we’d come to talk to Johnny in the first place. I didn’t know what their relationship had been like, but they’d shared three children so I went with a safe sentiment. “I used to go into Baptista’s all the time as a kid. She meant a lot to Miguel. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  The tendons of Johnny’s neck tightened like vertical ropes bulging from under his skin and he slowly closed his eyes. “I—we’re all having a hard time wrapping our brains around what happened. I can’t—We just—It doesn’t seem possible.”

  The very idea of death was impossible to comprehend at times. One minute, a person is alive and well and you’re talking to them. And then they’re simply gone. It was what Suzanne Alcott had said to us, and she was right. I took his bafflement as an opening. “Do you have a theory, Mr. Morales?”

  He stared blankly at me. “A theory?”

  “As to who could have killed Marisol? Or why?”

  He looked over our shoulders to the open space of the credit union. The place was practically deserted by this point. No one paid us any heed. “So many people get divorced and hate each other,” he said. “Me and Mari, we decided we weren’t going to be like that. We had kids together. We loved each other. We spent more than half of our lives together.”

  “High school sweethearts,” Mrs. Branford commented.

  “She was the one. Our marriage didn’t work out, but we still cared about each other.”

  Mrs. Branford shifted in her chair, propping her cane in front of her, clasping the top with both hands. “I thought you two would make it,” she said.

  He didn’t say anything for a minute, then spoke sadly. “So did I.”

  I could hear the regret in his voice and it made me wonder where things went astray. I hesitated, not sure how much to push, but I wouldn’t find out anything that could help get to the truth if I didn’t pry. “Do you mind . . . can I ask what happened between the two of you? It sounds like you still loved her.”

  His right hand found his left and, although he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, he rubbed his ring finger. A wedding ring was a touchstone for a lot of people. For Johnny, it was an old habit. “I never stopped loving her. It was stupid. I met some—I just—” He hung his head. “I made a mistake.”

  I read between the lines. A mistake in marriage, as I knew from my own experience, usually meant unfaithfulness. Sometimes it was the wife who strayed, and that happened more and more frequently, but men still took the top spot with infidelity. From what Johnny said, I took it to mean that he’d let someone else in.

  That was a betrayal I’d never been able to forgive, and based on their divorce, it looked like Marisol hadn’t been able to, either.

  I felt bad for the guy; he was obviously remorseful. But on the other hand, he’d made a choice, albeit a bad one, and he’d paid the price for it. I didn’t have words of sympathy for him about that. Mrs. Branford, though, came to the rescue. “Johnny, these things happen more than they should, but what’s done is done. No good is going to come from continued guilt. You and Marisol were amicable, did the best you could for your kids, and that, in and of itself, is admirable.”

  I thought about my own situation. I didn’t blame myself for my ex-husband’s infidelity. I’d done the best I could in my marriage. The fact that he’d strayed had bee
n his failing, not mine. I also didn’t hate him, although my friends back in Texas, as well as Emmaline and Billy, couldn’t understand that. “How can you not want to go postal on him?” Em had asked when I told her.

  I’d felt the anger and frustration and betrayal, but I also knew that hanging on to those feelings wouldn’t change what had happened, wouldn’t change Luke, and I’d be the one suffering from my own emotions. I, like Marisol, had moved on. Marisol had married David, and they’d seemed happy. Johnny, on the other hand, still seemed to be beating himself up over what had happened years ago.

  As Mrs. Branford continued to ease Johnny’s mind, I looked at the situation through a different lens. What if Johnny wasn’t as adjusted to the divorce itself as he projected? Maybe the fact that Marisol hadn’t been able to get over his cheating and had divorced him over it had angered him. Or maybe the fact that she’d moved on with David had pushed him over the edge. People who were guilty often placed that culpability onto someone else. What if he blamed Marisol for whatever had made him stray, enough that when they divorced, he still harbored that resentment and blame?

  They’d known each other for so long that he certainly had to know her habits. He could have followed her to the beach, killed her, and then dumped her body in the sea. I came back to the question I’d asked Johnny earlier. “Mr. Morales, do you have any ideas about who could have killed your ex-wife?”

  He rested his forearms on the desk, looking at us intently. “I’ll tell you what I think.”

  Mrs. Branford and I both leaned forward. This man probably knew Marisol better than anyone, so his suspicions were well worth listening to.

  “David.”

  My mind quickly processed David as a murder suspect. He and Marisol had been married for several years, but what if things in their marriage weren’t all that great? No one knew what went on behind closed doors; their marriage could have been in a shambles for all anyone knew. Could Marisol have regretted leaving Johnny? Or could she have done to David what Johnny had done to her? David would have known her habits, too. Whatever the scenario, could David have been pushed to murder over it?

  “You think David killed Marisol?” I asked.

  He tapped one of his hands against the other. It seemed like a nervous action. Was he unsure about throwing David under the bus as a suspect? Was it a real belief, or was he trying to divert attention away from himself? “No question. I’ve never trusted that guy. He told Mari about—”

  He stopped short, swallowing hard.

  “Told Marisol . . . ?” I prompted.

  “She turned to him after our divorce. I tried to make things right. I wanted to get back together with her, but by then it was too late.”

  I watched him, taking in his demeanor. He’d buried whatever misery and guilt he’d been feeling and now was squarely blaming David for the end of his relationship with Marisol. If David hadn’t swooped in, Johnny thought he and Marisol might have mended things.

  I didn’t understand what he was saying, though. “If David was there for Marisol after . . . whatever happened between you two, why would he kill her?”

  His chin quivered slightly and his nostrils flared as he breathed in. “She called me the other day. She wanted to get together to talk about something. I think things were going south for her and David.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  His eyes turned glassy. “She didn’t show. Now I know why.”

  “Wait.” My head snapped up. “Are you saying she was going to meet you the day she died? That’s why she didn’t show—because she was dead?”

  He drew his lips together and shrugged. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. The timing’s right. She left me a message to meet her.”

  My head felt fuzzy. “Where?”

  He scrubbed his face with a trembling hand. “The pier.”

  I jumped up, feeling antsy. “Okay, wait. So you’re saying that she wanted to meet you—on the day she died—at the pier?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. She said she needed to talk. That she didn’t know what to do. We were best friends since the beginning of high school. Our divorce didn’t change that. She needed to talk and I was there for her.”

  “But she didn’t show, so you don’t know what it was about?” I asked, trying to clarify and understand his leap to David as a killer.

  “Not for sure, but if it was about one of the kids, she would have told me over the phone. She couldn’t have kept that from me. We were good together, she and I. And we were good parents.”

  “All right, let’s say it wasn’t about your kids, then,” I said.

  He agreed. “Which leaves David.”

  So many thoughts circled in my head: Did he tell this to the authorities? Did he still have the message from Marisol? If what he said was true, what did she need to talk about specifically? Were she and David having problems? Had he done something? Was the grief we’d witnessed all fake? Did she regret leaving Johnny?

  I went with the question that rose to the top of the heap. “Do you still have the message?”

  He nodded, pulling his phone from his jacket pocket. He swiped and tapped until the voicemail screen came up, tapped one final time, and then he laid it on the desk between us. Marisol’s voice drifted to us from the little black device. “Hey. Um, sorry to bother you. Something’s happened and, um, I don’t know what to do. I need to talk. Can you meet me at the pier tomorrow? Let me know.”

  Hearing her voice was like seeing her ghost. It made it that much harder to comprehend the fact that she was gone. She didn’t sound scared in the message, but she did sound worried. Or maybe agitated. “Johnny,” I said, trying to control the urgency in my voice, because this felt like it was really important. “Have you shared this with the police?”

  He put his phone off to the side of his desk. “Not yet.”

  Mrs. Branford nearly jumped out of her chair. “Johnny Morales, what are you thinking? This is important. The police need to hear that message!”

  His gaze darted around the credit union before settling back on us. He lowered his voice. “What if they think—” He stopped. Lowered his voice. “What if they think I killed her?”

  “Did you?” Mrs. Branford asked, quick as a whip.

  Johnny reared back. “God, no! I told you, I loved her.”

  “Then you have to share the message with the police,” I said, perching on the edge of the chair I’d vacated a minute ago. “It could help them.”

  He was motionless for a moment, and then, abruptly, he stood, his gaze darting over my shoulder. I heard the low thud of footsteps against the floor. A man’s voice came from behind me. “Everything good here, Mr. Morales?”

  Johnny came out from behind his desk. “Yes, sir. Everything’s good. I was just showing these ladies out.” He sent us a pointed look with a clear message. He wanted us to leave.

  I held Mrs. Branford’s elbow as she stood, and I tried to catch Johnny’s eye, but he avoided my gaze. He ushered us to the main floor, skirting past the man who’d come to check on him. “Let me know what you decide about the loan,” Johnny said, although from the way he just threw the words out there, it wasn’t clear if he was talking to me, Mrs. Branford, or the credit union manager.

  “I will,” I answered, but a loan was the last thing on my mind. The second I got outside, I was calling Emmaline to tell her about the message from Marisol.

  Chapter 11

  Maple Street, one of just a few blocks in the historic district of Santa Sofia, was tree-lined and canopied, giving it a fairy-tale quality. Modern amenities and vehicles notwithstanding, driving down Maple felt like a gateway to a different time. Each home was unique, from the ladylike Queen Anne Victorian to the Craftsman-style to the old farmhouse on the corner, they each had character and a distinctive identity.

  I still had to pinch myself sometimes when I drove up to my quaint redbrick Tudor. It had a traditional half-timber exterior, old brick, a steep gable, and the roofline had a high-pit
ched slope. The deep red wavy edge of the siding at the gable peaks made it feel like a gingerbread house, and the enormous trees shading it softened the harder edges.

  Colorful flowerbeds lined the cobbled walkway leading to the arched front door. I slowed as I passed the house, noticing a car parked right in front. I wasn’t expecting anyone and it wasn’t a vehicle I recognized. I craned my neck before turning into the driveway, but the car was empty. It was only after I parked in the garage and doubled back to the front yard that I realized someone was leaning against the brick archway near the door.

  I stopped short, registering the broad shoulders. The artfully spiked dirty-blond hair. The cowboy boots that were more fashion than function. What the hell? Had his ears been burning? “Luke?”

  My ex-husband smiled, his eyes genuinely lighting up when he saw me. He pushed himself off the wall and strode toward me, arms outstretched. “God, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said, wrapping me up in a hug.

  My body went stiff, his very presence, let alone his touch, like a shock to my system. “Um, yeah, you too,” I managed. Although Luke Holden had lied and cheated and had not been a good husband, I’d known we weren’t meant to be together and I didn’t harbor ill-will toward him. He didn’t often leave Texas, and when he did, it was usually to go home to Louisiana. The California coast was certainly not part of his stomping grounds. “What are you doing here?”

  Instead of answering my question, he asked one of his own. “How’s Aggie?”

  Luke was the only person who called Agatha Aggie. Given that we’d both gone to the University of Texas in Austin, and the A&M Aggies were rivals, it always surprised me that he’d glommed on to that as a nickname, but he had, and even after years apart, it was still how he knew her. “She’s great. She loves it here,” I said as I slipped past him and unlocked the front door.

  I dropped my keys and purse on the vintage sideboard next to a Galileo thermometer. Luke let his fingers trail over the glass. “Nice,” he said.