Granny Apples 05 - Ghost in the Guacamole (9 page)

T
HEY
rode in silence while Emma maneuvered the SUV through a couple of miles of downtown traffic and onto the 110 Freeway heading north. Emma's home was less than ten miles away, but you never knew how long it would take with traffic. It could be a fifteen-minute drive or an hour's drive. Midday traffic was heavy but not clogged, and they made it back to the house in twenty minutes. In a couple of hours that same drive time would at least double.

Emma and Phil were comfortable with their silence without either feeling awkward. They often spent long stretches of time together reading and watching TV without a word between them, letting the occasional touch or smile speak for them. Emma enjoyed that about Phil Bowers. Grant Whitecastle, her ex-husband, always needed noise or action around, and he always demanded her attention when they were together. Being a TV star had made him a runaway narcissist. Or maybe he was a narcissist who had found his place in the limelight of show business. Either way, she'd often found it exhausting to be around him and was glad their daughter seemed content and comfortable in her own skin instead of craving praise and approval from others.

When they got to the house, they found Emma's parents at a table in the shade of the back patio enjoying cold drinks. Paul Miller was playing ball with Archie, their black Scottish terrier. Paul would toss the blue rubber ball as far as he could into their large landscaped backyard and the dog would dash off to retrieve it, dropping it at his feet and barking with excitement until he threw it again.

“Archie,” Elizabeth Miller said to the animal, “it's much too hot for you to keep that up.” But the animal didn't listen, hopping around until Paul threw the ball again.

“Is Granny with you?” Paul asked when Phil and Emma came through the back gate to join them. “She's good at wearing Archie out.”

“No, Dad,” Emma said. “She's off snooping around for me.”

Elizabeth indicated a tray with a frosty pitcher on the table. “I made up a batch of gin and tonics and there are a couple of extra glasses here. I thought you two might be along soon. Would you like some?”

“That sounds great, Elizabeth,” Phil said just before disappearing into the house.

Elizabeth put some ice from a nearby ice bucket into two tall glasses and poured liquid from the pitcher into each. Emma took one, took a long drink, and gave a sigh when she was finished. “That is so good, Mother. Thank you.” With her other hand she tapped the large crystal pitcher and smiled. “But you made quite a bit of the stuff. What were you going to do with it if Phil and I didn't come home?”

“Drink it all ourselves,” her father answered with a laugh. “We're staying home tonight, so what's the harm in getting a bit tipsy?” He looked at his wife and winked. “Maybe we'll even turn in a bit early.”

“Paul!” Elizabeth scolded, but there was color in her cheeks and a shy smile on her lips. “If you have a couple of those, you'll be on the sofa snoring like a freight train in no time.”

Emma took another long drink and smiled to herself. Her parents were still deeply in love after almost fifty years of marriage and still openly flirted with each other. It had been wonderful growing up in such a secure loving home. The only rough patch she remembered was after her older brother, Paulie, was killed in an accident. He'd run out into the street to get a ball and been struck by a passing car. The driver of the car had been overcome with almost as much horror and grief as her parents. Paulie had been eleven at the time. Emma had been nine. Only once, shortly after Emma discovered her medium talents, had she been able, with Granny's help, to contact Paulie's spirit and bring him to Elizabeth for a short visit. Although decades after the accident, it had done Elizabeth a world of good and helped heal the hole in her heart.

As her father reached out and took his wife's hand, Emma wondered what residual issues Kelly would have from living with Emma and Grant during their tumultuous marriage. Emma harbored a lot of guilt over that, even though it had been Grant who had been publicly cheating throughout most of the marriage. She knew Kelly wasn't that close to her father, even though she did see him when she was home and occasionally took short vacations with Grant and his second wife, Carolyn, and their son. Kelly adored Oscar, her half brother, but had no use for Carolyn. Kelly had come to love Phil, and Emma noticed that her daughter tended to go to Phil, not Grant, when she needed solid fatherly advice. Kelly also enjoyed Phil's two sons and got together with them on occasion without Phil and Emma as if they were her real brothers. Emma looked again at the entwined hands of her parents and smiled, knowing in her heart that she and Phil would have that kind of solid marriage.

“Did you leave any of that stuff for me?” asked Phil as he came out of the house with his laptop.

In answer, Emma pushed his full glass in his direction. “Get it now, cowboy, before it's gone. Dad's threatening to drink the entire batch.”

Phil took a seat at the patio table and took a long pull from his glass. “Now that's tasty,” he said when he was finished. He fired up his computer.

When Archie returned the ball again, Paul Miller didn't pick it up but instead told the panting dog to go lie down. The dutiful Archie wandered over to his water dish and lapped with gusto before curling up in a shady spot. Paul turned to Phil and said, “Are you going to try and get some work done? If so, maybe Emma's office might be best.”

“No,” Phil answered. “I'm going to see if I can get some hits on a search of people Emma and I are . . . ah . . . interested in.”

“Interested in?” Paul parroted. “You mean investigating, don't you?”

“Dad,” Emma said, looking at him with a set jaw, “you sound like Granny. We are not investigating anything. We're just curious about some of the people we've met recently.”

“Uh-huh.” Paul Miller stretched his long legs, a physical attribute Emma had inherited from him, and said, “Honey, you can say that all day long, but no matter how you slice it, what you do is investigative work. You investigate facts for your show and on the side you investigate the history and often murders of ghosts. Saying it's not investigative doesn't change the facts.”

“Nor does it change the danger,” snapped Elizabeth. Emma's mother, clearly agitated, rose from the table and started fussing with a nearby planter of flowers, snapping off dead blooms with the finality of an executioner.

Phil and Emma exchanged looks, both knowing that the usually pleasant and calm Elizabeth did not like her daughter's involvement with unknown ghosts and murder victims. Granny Apples was one thing. She was family and harmless, but some of the other ghosts Emma had investigated had led her into tense and even dangerous situations.

Emma looked at her father, who met her eyes and jerked his chin in the direction of his wife. Emma knew that look and gesture. It meant her father wanted her to address the issue with Elizabeth directly and immediately and not expect him to be the middleman. He had held that position all her life, expecting Emma to fight her own battles or plead her own case when she and her mother were in disagreement, which was happily not often. Emma had raised Kelly with the same independence, seldom interfering when Kelly and Grant had personal issues. Father and daughter had to carve out their own relationship, just as Emma had to do with both of her parents.

Emma took a long pull from her gin and tonic. “Mother,” she began, getting up from the table and going to Elizabeth, “I'm sorry. I know it's difficult for you and Dad when I find myself in the middle of a situation that goes sideways, but I don't look for trouble intentionally.”

Elizabeth moved to another planter and started removing the dead buds from the flowers on that plant in silence. Without a word she walked to a nearby trash container and deposited the dead leaves and petals. “I know you don't, Emma,” she said in a small voice. “Any more than Paulie intentionally ran out in front of that car.” She dusted her hands together to remove any loose dirt before turning to look at Emma. “But in both cases, it's danger that could have been avoided.”

Her mother had played the Paulie card. She seldom did but knew full well it would make Emma feel like crap. It was Elizabeth's way of saying she'd already lost one child and wasn't about to lose another, even if Emma was a full-grown adult. Emma studied Elizabeth's lined face. Even in her seventies her mother was still very beautiful. Elizabeth was small and compact and in the last year had stopped coloring her hair so now it was a shiny natural platinum silver. She wore it in a tidy and feathery short cut for easy care when she and Paul traveled, which they did a great deal.

When Emma remained silent, Elizabeth pointed an index finger at her. “Bullets, Emma. I'm talking about bullets. It's bad enough when you go into trances and lose yourself in the history of these spirits, but not too long ago you were in the middle of gunfire.”

“No one ever shot at me, Mother,” Emma pointed out.

“No, not directly, but one day you might not be so lucky.” Elizabeth starting tearing up. “And I just couldn't bear that.” Emma knew her mother did not cry lightly or often. The tears were real, not an emotional ploy.

Emma put a hand on each of her mother's shoulders. “Mother, I do try to be careful, and Phil and Granny look out for me.”

“Granny's already dead, Emma,” her mother remarked in comeback, “and I couldn't bear to lose Phil either, and neither could his aunt and uncle. They worry, too, you know.”

When Emma remained silent, Phil started to speak, but Paul held a hand up in his direction and gave him a nod, telling him to wait. This was between mother and daughter. Phil complied and went back to working on his laptop while keeping an eye on the two women.

“Mother,” Emma finally said, her voice even and kind. She dropped her hands from Elizabeth's shoulders and leaned against one of the patio posts. “I didn't ask for this ability, or gift as Milo would call it, any more than you did.” She paused, then added, “Any more than Kelly did or Tanisha Costello, and I know you are concerned about each of them, too.”

Elizabeth had locked her eyes on her daughter, letting her know that she was listening. With the addition of the two young women into the mix, she took a deep breath but remained silent.

“You choose,” Emma continued, “to only interact with Granny, and that's okay. Kelly and Tanisha might also choose to limit their interaction with the dead. But my abilities are much more developed than any of you at this point. Why? I have no idea.” Emma shrugged. “But they are, and the more this happens to me, the more I believe that they were given to me to help people, both the dead and the living, and I feel I must follow this path. The TV show I do is fun and interesting, but it's more on an intellectual level, not a personal one. So even if that were canceled, I know in my heart I would still assist people or spirits who came to me for help. It's who I am.” She paused, then said as a punctuation, “It's who you and Dad raised me to be.”

Instead of pinching more dead buds, Elizabeth gently caressed several of the flowers in the planter near her as she sorted her thoughts. The other three remained quiet, letting her have her space. The only sound was of ice tinkling in a glass as Paul raised his to take a drink.

Finally, Elizabeth turned her face back to Emma. “Just promise me that you will be extra careful and not take any unnecessary risks?”

Emma sighed with relief. “I will do my best, Mother.”

“And I'll be with her every step of the way,” added Phil.

Elizabeth looked over at Phil and smiled. “I know you will, Phil. It gives both her father and I great comfort to know that you and Tracy and Milo are looking out for her. And Granny, too.” She turned her eyes to Emma again and said, “That doesn't mean we don't worry, but it is a comfort.”

Emma stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her mother. “I'll do my best to stay safe and make you proud.”

When the embrace ended, Elizabeth looked at her daughter. “You always make us proud, dear. Always.” After a couple of seconds, she clapped her hands together in a single soft slap, indicating the end of the drama. “Now, why don't we freshen our drinks while you tell us about your latest ghost.”

“Are you sure you want to hear about it?” Emma asked.

“Yes, dear, we do.” Elizabeth moved back to the table and picked up the pitcher. She held it in midair a moment, then said with determination, as if making up her mind then and there, “If we can't stop you, maybe we can help you.”

O
NCE
Emma and Elizabeth were back seated at the patio table, Emma told them about the Ricardos, the sale of the restaurant, and the request by Felix to convince Rikki to sell. She also told them about Felix's death and their concern that it might not have been an accident.

“Dad,” Emma began, turning to her father, “Rikki told us that the coroner said that Felix died from the blow to his head, not from his heart attack. Is that common?”

Her father, a retired heart surgeon, pondered the question before answering. “A lot of people fall when they are having a heart attack. They try to get help and can't make it. Did Felix have a history of heart trouble?”

Emma exchanged looks with Phil. “We never asked that question,” Emma said, turning back to her father. “From what I've seen, I'd say he was in his mid-sixties or so when he died.”

“You never know, he might have had a history of heart problems,” Paul pointed out. “His death could have simply been a heart attack that had a tragic ending because of the fall and time that lapsed before anyone found him. Did his ghost say he was murdered?”

Emma gave the question careful consideration, rerunning in her mind her short encounters with the ghost of Felix Ricardo. A stillness covered the Miller backyard while everyone waited for her answer. The house was located on a small cul-de-sac, so not even traffic noise broke the peace and quiet. She could hear Archie's gentle snoring and the pecking of Phil working on his laptop. “No, he didn't, Dad, not exactly. He said that if Rikki didn't consent to the sale of the business, then she might end up in danger or dead like him.”

“Maybe,” said Elizabeth, “Felix meant Rikki would work herself into her grave. Your father and I have friends who own restaurants and they work night and day, even the very successful ones like the Ricardos. It's a very tough life.”

“Your mother is right,” added Paul. “Felix might be wanting a better life for his daughter before she ruins her health with stress and too much work. Didn't you say the sister wanted to go off and paint and live a more carefree lifestyle?”

“Yes, but Rikki seems to thrive in the business. And today Felix told me to tell her to take the sale money and start another restaurant someplace else.”

“That's easier said than done,” Phil said. “I'm sure whoever buys Roble Foods and the restaurant will have a noncompete clause in the agreement or a separate noncompete agreement barring the Ricardos from opening a restaurant or participating in any food service industry within a certain geographic area for a specified amount of time. And since Roble Foods is distributed in many supermarkets, the geographic area might be quite extensive.”

Emma studied Phil. He wasn't looking at her, but continued to plug away at the laptop. “So Rikki might be barred from working in the food industry altogether?” she asked.

Phil nodded and glanced at her before returning to his work. “Yep. Every contract and agreement is different, but if I were the buyer's lawyer, I'd push for an extensive noncompete. Your ghost might not have realized that when he suggested Rikki start another restaurant, unless he was thinking of her moving out of the area altogether.”

“What are you doing?” Emma finally asked Phil.

He looked up from his laptop. “I'm running searches on some of the cast of characters to see if anything turns up, including criminal records, but it's difficult without a birthdate or social security number. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. There are a lot of Carlos Fuenteses in the database, even narrowing it down to Los Angeles specific, so I narrowed the search by setting an age range. I'm coming up with nothing on him doing that. The hits I got were all older than the boy at the restaurant.”

Emma scooted her chair closer to Phil. “What about T.J.? His name is Tomas Mendoza.”

“Thomas or Tomas?” Phil asked.

“I'm pretty sure it was Tomas, no
h
,” she told him, “but I have no idea what the
J
stands for. I'd put him at about mid-thirties in age.”

“What about the companies that want to buy the restaurant?” Paul asked.

“I'm going to run a search on them, too,” Phil told them. “One was Fiesta Foods. What was the other?” he asked Emma.

“It was Fiesta Time Foods,” Emma said. “Or something like that. The other was Crown Corporation, but Lucy said they dropped their interest in Roble.”

“Good, because Crown Corporation is huge,” noted Phil. “It's going to pop up all over the place. I might as well be searching for General Mills.”

Phil started plugging in more information. “It says here that Fiesta Time, Inc., is a California corporation located in Montebello, so it's local.” He flipped to another site and started checking information there. He followed that up with a visit to the Fiesta Time corporate website. A minute later, he told them, “And it's not a publicly held company that I can see.” He maneuvered through the pages describing the products of the company. “Their products are similar to Roble's, but don't appear to be as widely distributed or as well known. And like Roble, they have a restaurant. It's located in Alhambra and is called Santiago's.”

“So the smaller fish wants to gobble up the bigger fish?” asked Paul.

“Sure looks that way,” Phil said. “But just because they're smaller doesn't mean they don't have the cash or credit to make it happen.” He jabbed the computer screen with an index finger. “It says here that they've been around a long time catering to the Latino population in the Southwest. Roble had taken their name and products mainstream,” Phil noted. “Maybe Fiesta now wants a piece of that action and thinks it can expand faster by buying the company already in that market.”

“They also might have thought that without Felix at the helm, Roble Foods was vulnerable,” noted Emma. “Rikki said something to her sister that selling to Fiesta would be like spitting on their father's grave. Maybe Fiesta had made a run at Roble before, or maybe there was bad blood between the two companies.”

“If that's the case,” suggested Phil, “with Felix now dead and gone, his enemy might be going in for the kill.”

Phil moved through the pages of the Fiesta Time website again. “Fiesta Time is owned by the Santiago family. I was hoping they would have their owners or management team listed, but they don't. A lot of companies do that and include photos. It would be good to see who we're dealing with on that end.”

Emma raised her glass and took a good long drink. “As I've already said, I did what Rikki asked of me and I did what Felix wanted. There's nothing more to do unless Phil or Granny come up with something really off the wall, like with that packet of money or whatever it was that T.J. handed off to Carlos.”

“That's what I'm doing now,” Phil said, still working on the laptop. “I e-mailed the photos to myself so I could open them up on the computer and enlarge them.” He worked over the keyboard and mouse, stopping every now and then to check the results before his fingers moved again. “My sons do this all the time. I wish they were here.”

Emma took another long drink of the gin and tonic. Something was nagging at her about this, even though she kept telling herself she didn't need to pursue it any longer.

“You planning on getting drunk on that stuff?” Granny asked, popping up.

“Why not?” Emma answered, this time not jumping at the ghost's appearance. “Granny's here,” she announced to everyone at the table.

“So I gathered from Archie's behavior,” noted Paul. They all turned to watch the dog, who had snapped out of his snooze and was staring into space, wagging his tail with excitement.

“Because we have work to do,” answered Granny, ignoring the dog.

“Did you find out anything more, Granny?” Emma asked.

“I followed Carlos back to the restaurant,” the ghost reported. “When no one was looking, he took the envelope out of his pants and put it in his locker. He looked inside briefly and it sure did look like cash to me. At least whatever was in there was green and made of paper.”

“Granny said the envelope did contain cash,” Emma told everyone.

“I'm glad she confirmed that,” Phil said, “because it's not clear on these photos. They're pretty grainy enlarged.” He turned the laptop in Emma's direction. Both Paul and Elizabeth got up and came to stand behind Emma to look. In the photos were two tall, slender men with dark hair—one young, one in his late thirties or forties. The older one was wearing a very nice dark suit and was handing something off to Carlos.

Emma pointed at the screen. “I don't think that's T.J. Mendoza.”

“Are you sure?” Phil asked.

“Not entirely because they're still pretty far away. This man has the same build and height and even looks like him, but my gut response is that's not T.J.” She turned to Granny. “Didn't you say Carlos called him T.J., Granny?”

“That's what it sounded like,” the ghost said. “They were talking Spanish so I didn't know what they were saying, but I know for sure I heard Carlos say
T.J.
I thought he was addressing that guy.”

“Can you enlarge the photos any more, Phil?” Emma asked.

“Not really.”

“Maybe they didn't mean the man T.J.,” suggested Paul. “Maybe the kid was referring to Tijuana.”

“There's another possibility,” agreed Phil.

“Go back,” Emma told Phil. He moved back a couple of photos. “There,” Emma said and pointed at the screen. It was a photo of the man in the suit turned slightly toward the camera.

Emma leaned forward, scrutinizing the screen a long time. Finally, she pronounced, “That is not Tomas Mendoza.”

“Are you sure, honey?” asked her father.

“Yes, Dad, I am,” Emma said with confidence. “He looks a lot like T.J. but he's better looking. T.J. is not a physically handsome man. It's his presence and confidence that make him handsome, not a pretty face.”

“This guy's a looker,” said Granny. “I remember that.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Granny just called this man a looker.”

“Hard to tell, Granny, from these photos,” Emma said, “but I'll take your word for it. “And his hair is a bit different than T.J.'s. T.J. wears his long and wavy on top and brushed back. This man does, too, but his sides are also long. The sides of T.J.'s hair are trimmed closer.”

“So Carlos was talking to this guy about T.J.?” asked Paul.

“It's very likely,” answered Emma. “Unless he did mean Tijuana. Phil, are you sure you didn't overhear anything?”

“Unfortunately,” Phil said, “the traffic on Cesar Chavez interfered. I caught a few words here and there and a couple of phrases. It sounded like the guy asked Carlos about school. He also told him the money was all there and that there might be more, or something like that.”

Emma nodded. “Yes, Rikki told me that Carlos enters college this fall.”

“Do you think the money was for schooling?” Granny asked. “You know, like a scholarship?”

Emma relayed the question to the group before answering. “I doubt it, Granny. If he was bankrolling Carlos's education, he wouldn't need to do it in secret with an envelope of cash. Even if he didn't want people knowing about it, he would probably still write a check.”

“Unless the money is dirty, like drug money or something similar,” noted Phil. “Then he might hand it out in cash, but I still don't understand the secrecy unless Carlos and this guy don't want people to know they're connected.”

“Good point,” Emma said. “Carlos got quite hot under the collar when Lucy inferred he was a
cholo
because of his tattoos, so maybe he's supersensitive about being linked to gang activities.”

Granny struck a pose. Slouching, she crossed her arms in front of her, fingers on both hands splayed in two different imitations of gang gestures.

“What in the world are you doing, Granny?” Emma asked the ghost.

“This is how
cholos
look on TV,” Granny explained. “What up, gangsta?”

Even though Elizabeth couldn't see Granny, she stared in her direction with an open mouth.

“What's going on?” Paul asked.

Elizabeth shook off the surprise and said to her husband in a low whisper, “We definitely need to monitor Granny's television time more closely.”

“I heard that!” snapped Granny, now annoyed. “Don't listen to her, homey.”

Emma shook off the interruption with a slow back-and-forth movement of her head.

“What is it?” Phil asked.

“I tell you later,” she told him. “It will give you a good laugh, but for now, let's get back to business.” Putting a hand on Phil's arm, she asked, “What was said about T.J.? That's the question here.”

Phil shrugged. “I couldn't make anything out about the context, but I do think it was the man and not the city he was referring to. There was too much background noise at that moment, but his name was definitely mentioned. I can see how Granny thought this guy was T.J. from what was said.”