Rebel Island (14 page)

At the end of the third-floor hallway, light leaked through
an open doorway. I peeked inside and found Jose sitting on a bed. It was raining inside the room. The ceiling drizzled and sagged. It looked more like a washcloth than sheet rock.

The room smelled of marigolds and limes. In one corner was a little altar covered with a turquoise shawl. It held a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe and a few framed photographs, probably Jose and Imelda’s dead relatives. A row of candles sputtered and flickered.

The bedspread was soaked. Everything was soaked. But Jose just sat there, holding his flashlight, watching the candles die one after the other.

“Jose.”

It took him a second to focus on me. “The attic. I think the roof above us is gone.”

“Do you know where Alex is?”

His eye twitched. “No, señor.”

“Your things are getting ruined. You want help covering them?”

Jose’s flashlight beam traced a figure eight on the soggy carpet. “There is not enough tarp in the whole house, señor. God’s will, what He keeps or destroys.”

I approached the altar. Among the photos of the honored dead, one showed Jose and Imelda, ten or fifteen years younger, each of them holding a baby.

“Your children,” I guessed. “Twins?”

He nodded.

“How did they die?”

He looked up, anger flaring in his eyes. We were suddenly man to man. No subservience, no careful deference. “I don’t talk about that.”

Translation:
None of your damn business, señor.

A trickle of rain spattered on my back. The drops against the damp carpet sounded like kisses.

“Chris Stowall was in the freezer for hours,” I said. “You didn’t have any reason to go in there when you prepared dinner?”

“No, señor.”

“Who else goes into the kitchen, usually?”

“I didn’t kill him, señor.” There was an odd tone in his voice…almost like regret.

“You said you’d heard of Calavera before. Was it only from the news?”

Jose’s nails bit into the palm of his hand. “That man, Señor Brazos. When he came here—”

“Wait a minute. Peter Brazos came here?”

“In November. He…talked to Señor Huff.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“It was not my place, señor. The man stayed for only a few hours. He asked questions and left. At the time, I did not think—”

“He talked to you?”

“
Un poco.
He asked how long we knew Señor Huff. He mentioned names I did not know, showed me photographs of some men and asked if I had seen them.”

“The drug bosses he was prosecuting?”

“
No sé, señor.
Perhaps.”

On the altar, a raindrop hit a candle and it fizzled out. In the old photograph, the faces of Jose, Imelda and their children flickered. I didn’t like Jose’s story about Peter Brazos. I especially didn’t like that Alex never mentioned the visit. He’d pretended to know nothing about Brazos or the murder of his family.

“Señor, I’m sorry you came here,” Jose said. “You and your wife.”

I tried for a reassuring smile. I’m not sure I pulled it off very well. “By tomorrow, the storm should pass. With any luck, a boat will come. We’ll all be able to leave.”

“Yes.”

“Alex wants to sell the hotel. What will you and Imelda do?”

He stared at me, as if the future tense meant nothing to him. “What can we do, señor? Mr. Huff gave us a home here. This is all we have.”

The contents of a room. A few photos and candles. A turquoise shawl and some Mexican blankets. All ruined by the rain.

“Six months ago, Calavera killed a woman and her two young daughters,” I said. “I don’t think he planned to do that. I think killing them shook him up so much that he started to think about retiring. Possibly even making amends.”

“Anyone who kills children, his soul is lost,” Jose said. “There are no amends.”

“We need to stay together,” I told him. “We’ll all sleep in the parlor.”

“I have to check the basement first. Mr. Huff…” He hesitated. “Mr. Huff said it was flooding.”

“Doesn’t it bother you that there’s a body down there?”

Jose gave me a look I couldn’t quite read. I thought he might be about to tell me something. Then he rose and left the room, leaving me alone with the rain and the scent of extinguished candles.

I had no luck finding Alex. Maybe because I was side-
tracked.

Somehow I got turned around on the first floor, running into a dead end where Alex had closed off the collapsed room, then heading back.

Yes, it’s true. Despite being a former sleuth, my sense of direction is sadly lacking. Maia has a great deal of fun reminding me of this whenever we’re lost on the highway.

I found a bedroom door ajar and figured it would do no harm to knock.

No answer. Natural curiosity, I looked inside.

After getting used to wreckage and chaos, I was a little shocked to find a completely neat room. The bedspread was folded down. An old-fashioned brown leather suitcase sat on the chair. One navy blue suit and a dress shirt hung in the closet. On the dresser lay a leather notebook, a ballpoint pen and a box of .45 ammunition.

Benjamin Lindy’s room. Either that, or I had seriously misjudged the college guys.

Under normal circumstances, I would’ve backed out.

Well, okay. Perhaps not. But at least I would have hesitated, pondering whether or not I should invade Mr. Lindy’s privacy. As it was, I went right in and opened the notebook.

He was a lawyer, all right. Everything was documented—neatly organized, dated and labeled, even though it appeared to be a personal scrapbook. The first thing inside was a studio portrait of a woman in her early forties, a little older than me, maybe my brother’s age. She had short blond hair and green eyes. Her sharp nose and the determined angle of her jaw reminded me very much of Benjamin Lindy. She had his wry smile, too, though on a beautiful woman, the effect was quite different than on an old gentleman. Her name was printed at the bottom of the photo:
Rachel Brazos.
The date:
Last Christmas.

The next page: a letter Rachel had written to her father. She asked whether the family ranch had gotten any rain. She invited her father to visit in Corpus Christi. She wrote about the tiles she had chosen for her kitchen remodeling, a play her two little girls had performed in school. She signed the note
XOX, Rae.
Nothing consequential. The letter was dated about a month before the photo was taken.

Some pictures of the two Brazos girls followed. Halloween. School picture day. I flipped through them quickly. They were painful to look at.

There were some news clippings about Rachel’s career at a local law firm. Following in her father’s footsteps. One article recounted a criminal case she’d worked in conjunction with the district attorney’s office. Apparently that’s how she’d met her future husband, Peter Brazos. Rachel’s successful legal career had been put on hold. Relatively late, she’d decided to become a wife and mother.

Like Maia. A little too much like Maia.

I kept turning pages. A few years farther back in time, one picture was labeled:
Rachel Lindy, graduation, Texas A&M.
Her hair was longer, swept over one shoulder. Her eyes gleamed with humor and confidence.

Next page: a poem by Rachel Lindy, clipped from a college anthology. The poem wasn’t very good. It described a storm. I didn’t want to read about storms.

Another letter from Rachel to her father. Judging from the date, Rachel would’ve been about twenty-two. She promised to visit over Thanksgiving. She gently chastised her dad for asking about who she might be dating.
Nothing serious, Dad! He would have to be as good as you, right? Guys like that are scarce!!!

The oldest clipping was about Rachel’s swim team in high school. Nothing earlier than that. Nothing from her childhood. No pictures of Rachel with her parents.

I flipped back to the most recent photograph of Rachel. Even without knowing her background, I would’ve guessed she was married with kids. The humor in her eyes was tinged with a kind of weary satisfaction—the look of a new mother who had a family counting on her.

“Finding what you want?”

Benjamin Lindy was standing in the doorway.

“Your daughter,” I said.

Lindy walked to the bed. He sat down stiffly, then folded his hands. “Yes.”

“Rachel and your two granddaughters were killed in that explosion. I’m sorry.”

In the dim glow of my flashlight, Lindy’s eyes glittered. “I’m done with sympathy, son.”

“You were friends with Jesse Longoria.”

“I told you, I asked his advice once. After that, we saw each other professionally a few times. I wouldn’t call him a friend. Then his supervisor Berry started communicating with that evil man.”

“Calavera wanted to make a deal.”

“He wanted to trade information for a new identity. Berry was helping negotiate his surrender. When Marshal Longoria found out, he did not approve.”

“Longoria tipped you off to what was happening.”

“On the contrary. I notified
him
what his boss was up to.”

“How did
you
find out?”

“Chris Stowall.”

“You knew Stowall?”

“No. I had never heard of Mr. Stowall until he called. He told me he knew who killed my daughter. He told me the killer was trying to make a deal with the Marshals Service to escape justice. I was incredulous. I contacted Longoria, and he was able to confirm the negotiations. Between us, we decided we could not let that happen.”

“How did Chris know to contact you? Why wouldn’t he just tell the police if he knew something?”

“Greed, sir,” Lindy answered. “Mr. Stowall wanted money for his information.”

“And he knew you wouldn’t go to the police? How?”

Lindy hesitated. “This whole area is a close-knit community, Mr. Navarre. Most people have heard of me. Rachel’s death was in all the media. I made no secret of my desire for revenge when she and her girls were murdered. I was quite vocal about the police’s failure to apprehend Calavera. I assume Chris Stowall knew all this.”

“How much did he want?”

“Fifty thousand dollars. Nothing, really.”

“You’d already paid him twenty thousand?”

“You mean the money you found in the duffel bag.” Lindy shook his head. “I don’t know where Stowall got that money. I had not paid him a dime. I did not intend to until we had found Calavera.”

I thought about the entries in Chris Stowall’s journal—the cryptic references to how much he needed money, and the suggestion that Lane had been encouraging him to leave behind his past shady dealings. Apparently, Stowall had other moneymaking schemes besides providing revenge opportunities to bitter old men.

“Chris promised Calavera would be here this weekend,” I said. “He sent Longoria a business card with the date, June fifth.”

“Yes,” Lindy said.

“Somehow he found an email from Calavera to the Marshals Service. Did Chris tell you anything else? Anything that hinted who Calavera was? Hotel employee? Guest?”

“Very little, Mr. Navarre. He brought us here. He promised irrefutable proof. He said…”

“Yes?”

Lindy tapped a finger thoughtfully on the top of his ammunition box. “He assumed I knew Rebel Island. He said I should have reason to hate this place.”

“Do you?”

He hesitated a little too long. “No. Perhaps he simply meant this is where I would find my daughter’s killer. That’s why I should hate the place.”

I looked down at the scrapbook, the picture of Rachel Brazos. She looked happy with her family and her life. She’d had every reason to expect many more years with her husband, watching their two daughters grow up.

“Mr. Lindy, once you find Calavera, what do you intend to do?”

The old man looked gaunt and hungry. Despite his formal clothes, his clipped gray hair, his grandfatherly manner, he reminded me suddenly of heroin addicts I’d known—polite, friendly, until you withheld what they wanted.

“Son, I know what happens in the legal system. You do too. My daughter’s death will go unpunished, because that’s a lesser evil when weighed against catching Calavera’s employers. I can’t allow that.”