A Killer Closet (12 page)

“Upstairs in the guest bathroom, last door on the left,” she said, resisting the urge to make what seemed to her to be the obvious comment about his beard or lack thereof.

She finished her coffee quickly and hurried upstairs to get dressed. She still had not found the sandals she wanted to wear when she heard the doorbell. Her first thought as she padded her way downstairs in bare feet was that it must be P.J. at the door, coming to explain about last night. There had to be an explanation, even if it was hard to imagine what it would be.

“Who is it?” she called to the door. Asking first was a precaution she'd never taken before when she lived in Santa Fe, but, given recent events, it seemed like a good idea now.

“Me. Rafael.”

She opened the door, half expecting P.J. to be with him. He was alone, but she could see Rafael's pickup and her own car, both covered with mud, parked at the curb.

“I got your car,” he said.

“I see that,” she said. “I didn't expect it so soon. Is P.J. with you?” She stretched her neck to try to see around him.

“No.”

She waited for him to say more, but he only looked at her, his expression blank. “I thought he was going with you to get the car.”

“Never showed up.”

“Come in,” she said, and opened the door wider. “I thought P.J. said the two of you would go together to get my car.”

“Oh,
sí, pero,
P.J., he got a phone call on his cell,” Rafael said in his customary mix of languages
.
“Then he said he had to leave. Said he'd meet me at the Texaco station just before you get on the freeway to Pecos. I waited, but no P.J.”

“How did you get my car down the mountain without—”

“Got a
compadre
with a tow truck. Maybe you met him. He was at the bar.”

“I don't remember meeting anyone other than you.”

“Oh
sí!
I forget. It was Adelle and Harriet that met him.”

“Tell him thanks for me, okay?” She reached into her purse, which she'd left on a table in the living room, and pulled out four twenties. “Give him this. And I'll write you a check for your help, if that's okay.”

Rafael put up his hands and backed away. “Oh, no.
Tú eres mi amiga.
What are friends for? I can't take that.”

Irene hesitated, trying to decide whether or not to protest that they weren't really friends, that they hardly knew each other. She thrust the money toward him again. “I wish you'd take this.”

Rafael shook his head. “Maybe I'll need your help someday,” he said. She saw his eyes move toward the stairs, where Angel was descending.

“Angel,” Irene said. “This is Rafael. He brought my car back.” The two greeted each other with a lift of their chins.

“You told me P.J. was supposed to help with that,” Angel said.

Irene didn't remember telling him that. What else had she said that she couldn't remember?

“He apparently had better things to do and never showed up, so Rafael got a buddy to help him.”

“Did you tell him P.J. tried to kill us?” Angel said, eyeing Rafael.

“No, I—”

“Kill you?” Rafael said. “P.J.? No way. P.J. don't kill nobody himself. He's too smart for that.”

Irene's eyes widened. “What do you mean ‘nobody himself'? Are you saying he'd hire—”

“Hey, dude,” Angel said, “all I know is he tried to run us off the road.”

Rafael shook his head. “P.J. wouldn't do that. Wasn't P.J.”

Angel took a step toward him. “It was his pickup.”

“Wasn't P.J.,” Rafael said again. “Maybe somebody stole it.”

“Who? Who would want to steal that wreck? And who would want to run me off the road? I was just driving my Mustang and minding my own business,” Angel protested.

“Don't know,
chiquillo.
You got enemies? You owe somebody for something? Crystal? Rock?” He surveyed Angel. “No, you just a
niño.
Maybe weed, huh?”

“Chinguate guey! No debo alguno, pendejo.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Irene said, stepping between the two. “Name calling's not going to help anyone.” She may have been losing her Spanish, but the most colorful words never fade away. She turned to Rafael. “Maybe it wasn't P.J., but Angel's right. It was his pickup. Angel works for me. He's clean, not the kind of kid people want to run over in their car.”

“Works for you? Oh,
sí.
Works for you.” Rafael gave Angel another sweep with his eyes and nodded knowingly.

“He works for me in my store. That's all!” Irene said.

“Okay.” He didn't sound convinced.

Irene took a deep breath. “Rafael, tell me this. Why do you think anyone would steal P.J.'s pickup?”

Rafael shrugged. “People do it all the time.”

“Not a beat-up fifteen-year-old Chevy.”

“P.J. has enemies. Maybe somebody don't like him 'cause he didn't get him off for a crime or something.”

“Far-fetched,” Irene said. “And, just to clear things up, I think whoever tried to run us off the road was after me, not Angel.”

“Oh,
sí
! Makes sense.”

“Why does it make sense?” Irene wanted to scream the question at Rafael, but she managed to keep her voice reasonably calm.

“They got your
mama,
they killed the other
mujeres.
Why not you?”

“Now there's a comforting thought.”

“Sorry,
amiga.
”

Irene took a deep breath. “All right, Rafael. Thank you for bringing my car, and I'm happy you think of me as your friend. I'd offer you coffee. Or breakfast. But I have to go to the police station.”

“Police?” Rafael was clearly alarmed.
“Porque?”

“We have to make a report about someone trying to run us off the road,” Irene said.

“Wasn't P.J.,” Rafael said, as he turned toward the door.

“Yeah, you said that before.”

“Don't bother asking about your mama while you're there,” Rafael said. “They won't be no help to you. Just leave that to me.”

He was out the door before Irene could respond.

“Don't listen to him,” Angel said, when he was gone. “We should report that road incident to the police.”

“Yes,” Irene said. She was still pondering why Rafael wanted everything left to him.

“I'll meet you there,” Angel said. “Couldn't find your razor, and I need a clean shirt, and since you have your car back…”

“Go!” Irene said, pushing him toward the door.

Angel drove toward his house in the Agua Frio district, one of the oldest residential areas in Santa Fe, where his ancestors had lived for five centuries. As he drove, he was thinking about Irene. Worrying about her, actually. Her mother was missing, someone had tried to kill the two of them, or at least harm them, and then that crazy Rafael showed up at her door warning her not to go to the police. That made Angel suspicious. Rafael was obviously wary of the police. That made him less than trustworthy in Angel's mind.

Why had Rafael found it so important to defend P. J. Bailey? Were the two of them mixed up in everything that had happened? Maybe even the murders? Or was he just getting spooked? He knew P.J. because of an unfortunate experience when he was younger, but he didn't know him well enough to make a judgment about his capacity for murder. Everyone in Santa Fe, probably even everyone in the state, had heard of him because he was the defense lawyer in all the high-profile criminal cases, like the guy who was accused of shooting a four-year-old girl in a road-rage incident because her father had cut him off on the freeway. Then there was that woman who killed her husband and buried his body parts in her backyard. P.J. made the national news in that trial. The press labeled it the Ice Queen case after the nickname they gave the accused woman. That was because she froze the body parts in her freezer before she buried them.

Sometimes people wrote letters to the paper talking about what scum he was for defending those people, and especially for keeping them out of prison. Once, Angel had heard P.J. on the news. He was being interviewed by a blond cheerleader-type reporter. She asked him if he ever felt bad about getting criminals off and setting them free on the streets. P.J. told her everybody had a right to defense in court, and it was his job to make sure people's rights, including accused criminals, were protected because that was the American Way. That seemed to confuse the pretty reporter.

It was kind of fascinating to watch P.J. He got a reduced sentence for the road-rage driver because he was able to prove that the little girl's father provoked the incident. Then he got the Ice Queen off because he proved that she was the victim of severe domestic violence and the stress made her crazy. She ended up in an institution for the mentally ill for a while. When she got out, P.J. was in the news again because a crazed killer was on the streets. Yet, as far as Angel knew, the Ice Queen had never sliced up or frozen anyone else.

There were all kinds of rumors about P.J. There was the one that he was a lawyer for organized crime, drug dealers in particular, because he had defended some of the worst criminals in those cases. Angel couldn't remember how all of the trials turned out, but he remembered seeing P.J. on the news. There was another rumor that he bribed jurors and judges regularly, but there'd never been any proof.

As for Rafael, Angel had never heard of him before today. He didn't know why the guy had taken an immediate dislike to him for suggesting P.J. tried to run them off the road. Maybe it was more than that. Could be he was instinctively trying to protect Irene and didn't like the idea of a man in her house. That didn't make much sense, though. For all Rafael knew, he could have been her son. Or maybe her lover. Naw, it made more sense that he was defending P.J.

Could be Rafael was some kind of criminal P.J. had defended and Rafael was trying to show loyalty. Or could it be that he just wanted to keep Irene away from the Pecos Wilderness and Mariposa in particular? Was that why he'd brought Irene's car down the mountain? To keep her away? Was there something up there that warranted people being killed?

Angel was beginning to think he was becoming too spooked. He was becoming irrational. After all, he had wanted to help Irene however he could. She was kind enough to give him a job, and Mrs. Baumgarten, his old English teacher from Santa Fe Catholic, had been good enough to find her for him.

The women in his life had been his salvation—his grandmother, who had taken him in with her after his mother died of a drug overdose; his two older sisters, who, though they had moved out of state to try to create their own safe lives, still sent money and gifts and visited when they could. He had never met his father, who had disappeared before he was born, and his mother died when he was three, so he barely remembered her.

Harriet Baumgarten had long been more than just a teacher to him. She was the one who had helped him get a scholarship to attend the private Catholic high school his last two years and had helped him with the scholarship application for the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. He supposed she had rescued him from himself. Before she stepped in, he'd gone to a public high school, and was failing most of his subjects, mostly because he never went to class. He spent his time with a group of boys experimenting with drugs. They were a gang that called themselves the Capitolistas. They were the ones who called women like Harriet Baumgarten
Perra Rica,
Rich Bitch. They were the ones who beat him within an inch of his life because he was gay. That happened even before he was sure he was gay. Or at least before he had admitted it.

Angel opened the door to the house that had been his grandmother's, and her grandmother's before that, and before that somebody else's in the family, all the way back to the seventeenth century. No one was sure if any part of the house was the original, but it was obvious that the house was old and rambling, constructed partly of adobe and partly of frame and stucco. Rooms had been added on over the years. They were added to accommodate a growing family back in the time when generations lived together.

As he stepped inside, he was struck by the mess he'd left there. His grandmother, had she lived to see it, would have been appalled. She had died during his first year at the University of Art and Design and left the house to him.

He kicked a pair of jeans out of his way and headed for his closet in the bedroom that had always been his. He was hoping there was at least one clean shirt there. He found one, along with a clean pair of jeans. He wouldn't take time for a shower, but he did need a shave, in spite of what Irene Seligman thought. His beard was already becoming heavy—a legacy from his Moorish ancestors in Spain. At least that's what his grandmother, his
abuelita,
told him. She called him
El Moro
at times.

He missed her, even though she'd been gone more than a year now. She had always loved him. Even when he was unlovable. She forgave him when he was arrested for shoplifting liquor—a requirement for the first level of membership in the Capitolistas. She accepted him and loved him when he finally got the courage to tell her he was gay. Her response had been,
“Amores y dolores no pueden estar secretos.”
Love and grief cannot be kept secret. There had been times when he couldn't tell the difference. Like his first love—a boy in eighth grade he'd never had the courage even to speak to. Or later, in high school, when everyone found out about him and Sam Finley. Sam broke it off just before he moved away to Colorado and just after Angel had been beaten by his fellow gang members. There had been no one since.

He hadn't mentioned the fact that he was gay to Irene. He wasn't even certain why it seemed important. Nobody ever felt compelled to say, “Hey, I have to tell you I'm straight,” did they? Truth was, Irene probably wouldn't care, anyway. He appreciated that, but he wished she would recognize him as the man he was and not the kid she perceived him to be.

No time to worry about that now. He had to meet her at the police station.

“This place is beginning to feel like home,” Irene said as she and Angel walked from the parking lot toward the door to the police station. “I spend more time here than I do at my store.”

Angel opened the door and waited for her to go inside. “Let's just get this over with and go open the store. You'll feel better once you're there.”

“I doubt that,” Irene said. “The only thing that's going to make me feel better is to find Adelle unharmed. It's no comfort to me that Rafael said the police won't help.”

“Pinche idiota!”
Angel said under his breath.

“Yeah, I know. You two really hit it off, didn't you?” Irene said.

The front receptionist looked up from her computer. “Oh, it's you again,” she said, looking at Irene and forgetting for the moment to use her overly polite, singsong voice. “If you've come to see the chief, I'm afraid he's not in.” She'd reverted to her robot voice.

“I called before I came. He said—”

The receptionist put on her fake smile as she interrupted in a patronizing tone. “He got called away. Law enforcement is unpredictable, you see.”

“Is it really?” Irene clenched her fist to keep from strangling the woman.

“The assistant chief is available, if you'd like to speak with him,” the receptionist said.

“Assistant chief, the janitor, whoever,” Irene said. “We just want to make a report on a traffic incident. The person my friend spoke to on the phone said we had to come down here to do it, so let's get it over with.”

“One moment, please,” the receptionist sang. She picked up a telephone and turned her back so Irene and Angel couldn't hear her as she spoke to someone. “Have a seat. Lieutenant Vine will be with you shortly. You can fill out these papers while you wait.”

“So much for getting it done and opening the store on time,” she said, as she and Angel went to the seating area. She sat down next to him in one of the uncomfortable straight-backed chairs, expecting a long wait.

Lieutenant Vine surprised her, however, by showing up within seconds after she finished writing out the report. He directed them to follow him to his office.

“A traffic incident, hmm, yes, I see.” Vine studied the paper Irene had handed him. “Tell me about it.”

“We were in Angel's car approaching Hyde Park Road. It was about seven o'clock at night,” Irene said. “Angel was driving me home after we closed my store.”

Vine turned his attention to Angel. “Did you recognize the car?”

“No, but Irene did,” Angel said.

“A pickup. It belongs to P. J. Bailey,” Irene said.

“Are you certain the car belongs to Mr. Bailey?” Vine asked, without looking up from the paper he was writing on.

“Of course I'm certain,” Irene said. “No one could mistake that pickup.”

Vine nodded. “I've seen his pickup.”

Angel shifted in his seat, which caused Vine to eye him with interest. “Did you have something to add, Mr. Barreda?”

Angel shook his head without speaking, and Vine studied both of them for a second or two. “Did either of you get a look at the driver? Or get the license number?”

“It was too dark,” Irene said.

“Can either of you think of a reason why Mr. Bailey might want to harm you?”

“No,” Irene said, and glanced at Angel.

Angel's answer was a shrug. “Not me. Don't even know the guy. Except by reputation.”

“How would you describe his reputation?” Vine asked.

“I'm sure you know he's in the news all the time. For defending the worst criminals.”

“Yeah.” Vine's tone could be described only as grudging. That was followed by a string of questions: When was the last time either of them saw Mr. Bailey? What was said between the two of them? Why was Angel driving her home? At what time was her car returned? Did Rafael Lopez explain why Mr. Bailey had not accompanied him as promised? Had Mr. Bailey been in her store since the two murders had occurred?

As she and Angel answered all the questions, Irene's uneasiness grew.

“How well did Mr. Bailey know your mother?” Vine asked.

“You obviously think he has something to do with her disappearance,” Irene said.

Vine answered once again without looking up from his notes. “At this point, I have made no conclusions. I'm just trying to cover all of the bases.”

Irene didn't respond, but she was sure Vine was thinking the same thing she feared—that P.J.'s attempt to harm them or at least to force them off the road was somehow connected to the murders and to Adelle's disappearance. Her suspicion was accompanied by fear—for Adelle as well as for herself. She had no doubt it was all connected to whatever was locked in that vault in the Delgados' mountain lodge.

“There's something else,” Irene said. She was ready to tell Vine about the locked room that looked like a safe.

Vine looked up from his notes. “Yes?”

“When we were up there at the lodge, the Delgados' lodge in the mountains…” She stopped speaking and felt her heart pound erratically. Maybe she shouldn't mention it. But there was no reason not to, was there? She'd already told Andy in the first report. “There was this vault…”

“Vault? Yes, it's in the report.”

“I can't help but believe it has something to do with my mother's disappearance. Has your department checked it? Opened it, I mean?”

“I can't discuss all the details, but I can assure you the investigation is ongoing,” Vine said.

“And you know, don't you, that there had to be somebody who was up there in the lodge who took my mother.”

“Either that or she disappeared on her own,” Vine said.

“She wouldn't do that.”

Vine looked back at his notes. “That's one of the things we hope to find out.” He sounded unbearably condescending to her. He glanced up again. “Anything else?”

She stared at him for no more than two seconds. “Uh…no. Nothing else.”

“Please feel free to contact me if you think of anything more,” he said, rising from his chair—a sure sign that they were being dismissed.

“Of course,” Irene said. She and Angel were almost out the door when Lieutenant Vine spoke again.

“The most important thing I can say to you at this point is to make certain to let us know if you see Bailey again, and especially if he tries to contact you.”