Candy Kid (18 page)

She’d staked out a couch in the smaller but more popular room of the Cantina. Two of Bob’s special punches were already on the table. How she’d managed to keep away the Cantina
lobos,
Jose didn’t know. They eyed him with loathsome envy as he established himself.

He didn’t want to play games, he wanted to know her. But he said in a nice loud coo, “Hello, sweet.”

Her yellow-brown eyes weren’t those of a lovely young hotel guest, they were as stone cold as those of the
sorbita.
She said, “I would prefer you didn’t call me that.”

“But it’s your name.
Dulce
is sweet, sweet is Dulce. Sweet as candy.” He took a sip of the punch and saluted its creator presiding behind the bar. “Sweet as La Rosa del Amor.”

She wasted no more time. “What did you do with the package?”

He was as distressed as Juana would have been at an accusation. “You didn’t receive it?”

“You didn’t deliver it.”

“My cousin delivered it. The very first thing I checked on when I returned last night.”

She said quietly, “It wasn’t the right package.”

He was voluble. “The package you sent me to pick up contained a bottle of perfume. True? The perfume was La Rosa del Amor. True? A bottle of La Rosa del Amor was delivered to you at the desk last night? Also true?” He pretended to be quite proud of his logic.

She repeated, “It wasn’t the right package. What did you do with the original one?”

“Sweet,” he began and at her faint frown, apologized, “Sorry. It goes better in Spanish, yes? Dulce—”

“The name is Dulcy.”

“My pronunciation she is not so good?” he protested with as heavy an accent as Jaime could have offered.

“Stop playing games. What did you do with the package you picked up for me at Senor Praxiteles’?”

“I lost it.”

She didn’t believe him. She was nearing anger. “That isn’t true. You opened it.”

“Dulce!”

“If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have known what was in the package. You wouldn’t have known what to substitute.”

“Dulce!” he explained simply, “I have a nose!” His grimace underlined it. “I didn’t find it difficult at all. That smell one could never forget.” He laughed. “It is very popular with the girls of Juarez.”

She hadn’t mentioned the candy; if she believed him ever so slightly, she wasn’t going to. Nor was he. The
dulce
was the important part of it.

“I did not open your package,” he continued with dignity. “I merely lost it.” As if confessing a humiliation, he added, “I believed you would not know the difference if I replaced it.”

While she thought it over, he beckoned a waitress. “Another punch?”

Dulcy shook her head.

“Then we’ll order.”

She barely waited for the attendant to leave the table. “Where did you lose it?”

“In Juarez.”

“Where?”

“Look, chiqua, you don’t really want me to give you the old gag, do you?”

Annoyed, she bit the corner of her lip. “You had it at the Cock. You left the Cock, crossed the bridge, took a cab to the hotel.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “You used binoculars.”

She was stonily silent.

“Or X-ray eyes,” he proceeded blithely. “Or,” he smiled, “you had a little talk with Canario.”

She neither affirmed nor denied. She didn’t care. She said, “I must have that package, Mr. Aragon.”

“I did my best, Miss Farrar,” he imitated. “I even went so far as to return to Praxiteles’ filthy hole and ask him for a refill.”

“You did what?” She wasn’t the icily controlled Miss Farrar now. A part of her reaction came from anger, a part from incredulity—that he had confessed to Praxiteles and lived to tell the tale?—and a part, undeniably, was from fear.

“He tried to tell me that he didn’t sell perfume.”

Lunch intruded. He began to eat at once. She looked at her plate but not as if she was seeing it. She said, “It is important that I find the original package.”

“Might not be easy,” he decided, eating heartily. “Lot of petty thievery in a border town. Borders always attract scum for a good many reasons. But then there’s always informers, if you can pay. Take Canario, for example.”

She broke in, “You aren’t a fool, Mr. Aragon. Maybe I am. I didn’t know who you were when I asked you to get the package for me. I did know when I asked you to bring it here, but I believed you were honorable.” An honorable sucker. She began to eat without tasting. “You didn’t lose that package. For some reason you have decided to keep it for yourself.”

“Why is it so important to you?” he asked.

She put down the fork as if she’d made a decision to speak frankly. “Because it wasn’t for me, Mr. Aragon, it was for a friend. One who had done a favor for me. I was returning the favor. You can imagine how I felt when it was the wrong package.”

“And how did you know it was the wrong one?”

“He knew,” she said. She began to eat again as if she’d talked too much.

Jose leaned across the table. “Don’t look now but just entering is a long, tall fellow with that weather-beaten Texas look all over his face. I wouldn’t mention him only he happens to be an El Paso cop.”

She tried to put on the what-is-it-to-me expression but it wasn’t good.

“He drove me to Santa Fe last night. Before that he’d searched my bags.”

She didn’t try to hide the start that one gave her.

“And before that he’d asked me a lot of questions about certain events that had to do with your precious package. In particular about the death of a man named Tustin.”

She was finishing-school polite about the way she buttered her bread.

“Let’s both stop playing games. Tustin was after you until you transferred the responsibility of safe delivery of the package to me. You were scared of him, that’s why you hired what you believed was a Mexican punk to pick up that package. Maybe you thought no one would suspect the punk, I’ll credit you with that much, but at the same time you were thinking if there was any real trouble brewing, he was expendable and you weren’t.”

“You are insulting, Mr. Aragon.”

“Let’s cut out the Mr. Aragon business. We’re going to see a lot of each other while you’re hanging around these parts and I’m not risking my reputation as a caballero by having a babe like you handle me with ice tongs. You can save your own face by reminding yourself that the hired man is called by his front name, none of this mister stuff. And I’m still your hired man. Until I hand the package over to you.”

“You did find it then?” she asked quickly.

“I didn’t lose it. It was lifted from me. I’ll get it for you. May take a little time but I’ll get it.”

“You know who took it.”

“Yeah, I know who took it. And I’m not telling that to you or to your dear brother or to that cop over by the bar. Us hirelings stick together. There’s two parties after that original bottle of perfume to say nothing of the cops.” He laughed. “Might be remunerative to set them bidding against each other.”

She said bluntly, “You need money like I need more men tagging after me. You’re the Spanish-grant Aragon.” Her lips curled. “Yes, I looked you up quite completely after my initial error. What is it you really want?”

He considered the question. “I want to talk to the man for whom the package was intended.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“And you’ll turn it over to him?”

“Dulcita, carita, bobita!” he laughed. He simmered down. “I will tell him where he can find it.”

He didn’t mention that Harrod was approaching the table. That Harrod had kept an eye on them all the while he stood at the bar. She didn’t know about the cop until he was speaking over her head to Jose.

“Hello, Jo. None the worse for your late journey?”

Jose played it surprised. “Good afternoon, sir. I’m fine. You too?” He didn’t make introductions.

Not that it bothered Harrod. “I’d like to meet your friend.” It was demand not request.

Jose smiled. “I ought to insist you find your own friends. Miss Farrar, Captain Harrod.”

“Do you mind if I sit down?” He pushed in by Dulcinda without waiting for a reply. “I missed talking to you in El Paso.”

“Yes?” she replied uncuriously.

“You were at the Chenoweth the same time that Tustin was there.”

She seemed exasperated at what could have been an insinuation. “I wasn’t with him, whoever he is. I didn’t know anyone at the hotel.”

“Except Beach and me,” Jose supplied blandly.

She was precise. “Your cousin joined my table in a Juarez cafe. He’d had a little too much to drink and felt flirtatious. Later you joined us. I had no idea that either of you was staying at the Chenoweth until your cousin mentioned it. I had not noticed either of you there.” It was full statement, for Harrod not for Jose.

“You were at the hotel about a week.” Harrod pushed at a bread crumb.

“Yes.” The monosyllable was tentative.

“Why?” At the lift of her eyebrows, Harrod continued. He was exploring the same vein Jose had wondered about when he first met her. “We’ve got a nice little city, Miss Farrar, I’m not saying anything against it. But even the Chamber of Commerce knows it’s no summer resort. A lot of folks come through in the summer, sure, on their way east or west. And a lot of folks have to come down on business. And there’s some who come visiting friends or their folks. But I don’t know anybody who’d spend a week there in August for no good reason.”

She spoke with chilly amusement. “I never thought I’d have to account to the police in this country for my spending a week in any city I chose. I had a very good reason for being there, Captain Harrod. I was waiting for my brother and a friend to arrive.”

“From Mexico?” He slid it in so easily that she’d said, “Yes,” before she knew it.

“They got delayed?”

Her eyes were quick. “No,” she denied. “I didn’t know exactly when they would arrive. I was ahead of schedule.”

“Were they motoring?”

“Really!” she murmured. “You’d better ask them about their trip. They may have traveled by train or plane or motor or burro, I didn’t ask.”

“They must have covered a lot of territory,” Harrod mused. “You were in Mexico too, weren’t you?”

“I’ve been there.”

“I didn’t exactly mean that,” he said quietly. “What I meant was you were all down there together only you came back first. You flew to El Paso and waited for the others to catch up.”

She was seething. But it was an act. Beneath, she was frightened. “Really, Captain, why do you bother to question me? You seem to know everything there is to know about my business.”

“Not everything,” he corrected.

She let herself get mad now, the way a person would who had nothing to hide. “I can’t see that it’s any of your business if I travel in Mexico or Patagonia or stay at a hotel in El Paso or Paris.”

“Now, maybe I’m too curious,” Harrod mused.

“Maybe you are,” she said shortly. She wanted to get up and leave but she was boxed in by the two men and by the low table pushed against her knees. She couldn’t move until one of them helped her.

“But it’s hard not to be curious when somebody spends a week in August in El Paso.”

“I told you—”

“Yeah. I didn’t know you were waiting to meet someone. Kind of surprising you didn’t pick out another meeting place but then I guess you folks wouldn’t know about our climate in the summer.” He cleared his throat. “Then I’m kind of curious about you coming in from Mexico and Mr. Tustin coming right after you.”

She tried to push the table away. It didn’t budge. “Captain Harrod, I am quite certain there must be many people who come from Mexico to your city. It’s a direct route to the States. As for this man you speak of, I assure you I know nothing about him.” She implied that she didn’t care to.

Harrod went on just as if she hadn’t interrupted, “And both of you hanging around instead of going about your business the way other folks do when they’re heading north.”

“I’ve explained—”

“But this fellow waited too. Funny you didn’t meet him, he kept following you around.”

“Very funny,” she commented. She added, “I’d have gone to the police had I known I was followed.”

“Too bad you didn’t know,” Harrod said. “He might be alive today if you had.”

“You mean this man is dead?” She couldn’t have sounded more honestly astounded.

“Yes, he’s dead now.” They were two experts playing each other. But she was scared. Jose watched one and then the other. Silently. She murmured something that might have meant she was sorry to hear it even if it meant nothing to her. Harrod said, “Happened the night your brother got in.”

She ignored the reference to her brother. She clutched her purse and gloves. “I’m sorry, Captain Harrod. I didn’t know this man existed.”

Adam was just coming into the Cantina. Jose gesticulated but the big fellow didn’t see him. Harrod and Dulcinda each gave Jose a disapproving glint. “Sorry,” he murmured.

“I’m sure my brother knows as little about him,” she concluded.

“Might as well ask him. Where can I find him?”

All at once she was sweet as candy. “Mr. Aragon’s cousin, Beach Aragon, drove him and Mr. Ragsdale up to Los Alamos today.”

Jose was alert. “You didn’t tell me that!”

“Didn’t you know? We planned it last night. I’m afraid I overslept.” She smiled apology. “I’ll have to go another time. They say it’s quite interesting.”

Harrod’s only answer was a vague “Mmm.” He shoved out the table as if needing to let off steam. “I’ll talk to him later. I’m sure you’ll tell him what I’m after.” His stork legs carried him out of the bar.

Dulcinda watched until he was out of sight. Her voice came disturbed. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Warn you of what?”

She shook her head, shaking away whatever was churning there. “He isn’t interested in the package. He’s interested in that man you were talking about—what’s the name—Tustin?”

She didn’t need to fumble for the name, it was easy to remember.

“What do you care? You didn’t know him. You didn’t know he existed.” He pushed out the table. They rose together.

“You doubt it?”

“No more than Harrod does.” Their eyes met, unsmiling.

But he didn’t want it to break up this way. Whether she was innocently involved in an unsavory mess or whether she was in it up to her eyes, didn’t matter right now. It was important not to lose her. His hand touched her arm. “Come on, let’s forget it. Have a liqueur and meet Adam.”