Cinco de Mayhem (29 page)

“Double chocolate with cayenne pepper,” Flori was saying. “I like my cookies hot, don't you, Mr. Strong?”

Jake raised an eyebrow at me and Georgio. “Quite the chat you two were having.”

Georgio, surely a natural liar, answered for us. “Rita has contacted her landlady about the painting I desire to purchase. Soon it will be mine.” He grabbed my hands in his. “Rita, I shall take you to dinner to celebrate when the transaction is complete.”

“That's okay,” I said, slipping my hands away and moving behind Flori and the protection of her tai chi and cookies.

Jake tapped his watch. “We have to get going.” He gave Flori a little hug and told her to keep up hope for Linda. My hug lasted longer, and included a whisper in my ear. “Please be careful, Rita.”

B
ack at Tres Amigas the smell of singed baked goods filled the air. Addie popped her head out of the kitchen to greet Flori and me. “I'm making Junior some sweet biscuits to pick up his spirits.”

A wisp of smoke rose from the tray she held. Flori praised her good sentiments and suggested less time in the oven. “About ten minutes less for those cookies, Addie. Try ten minutes total, tops.”

Addie popped back into the kitchen to burn more cookies. Flori and I took seats by the mariachi mannequins, and I relayed Georgio's theory of untraceable phones and blackmail.

She nodded agreeably. “If he's right, then the only way we can identify the receiver is to keep calling and hope someone answers.”

Just what I dreaded. “What if they
do
answer this time? If we keep quiet, they can't recognize us, but we can't lure them out. We can't very well
say, ‘Hey, you're the murderer. Want to come over for tea and cookies and confess?'”

“That sounds like a right nice plan,” Addie said, flouncing in, hairnet delicately balanced on her wig. She held out a tray of mostly unburned cookies.

“Sugar cookies,” she said proudly. “With extra salt. Salted everything's popular, isn't it? Salted caramel, salted chocolate . . . so I doubled up the amount. What do you think?”

I settled on “Mmmm” to avoid bad manners and because the salinity had dried out my tongue.

“These will be lovely with big pots of tea,” Flori said. “Addie, why don't you join us? We might have a little acting job for you, dear.”

A
while later Addie clutched Don's blackmailing phone with one hand and a bag of hard cinnamon candies in the other. “Okay, let me practice once or twice.” She popped a handful of candies in her mouth and said in a low, garbled voice I barely recognized, “I know what you did. Ha, ha, ha.”

“Perfect,” Flori said.

“Amazing,” I agreed. “But instead of ‘Ha, ha,' tell them where we want to meet. The bandstand at eight
P.M.
tonight.”

“Cinco de Mayo,” Flori said. “A day of battle. Perfect, and the killer won't have much time to prepare.”

Neither would we.

Addie crunched some of her candies. Cinnamon and anxiety filled the air.

“It's okay,” I said, to myself as well as Addie. “You're calling the city health department first. Ask the receptionist for Gerald Jenkins. When he picks up, give him your lines, and remember to do the different accent so you won't be recognized.”

Our plan counted on the killer actually answering and us luring him or her out, without giving ourselves away in the process.

Addie shifted her candies from cheek to puffing cheek. “Okay, got it. Here it goes.” She asked for Jenkins in her candy-garbled voice.

My heartbeat increased as his line began to ring. I halfway hoped he wouldn't pick up, but he did.

“Oh!” Addie said, before switching into a gravely New Jersey mobster voice. “Hey! I know what youz did. Meet at the bandstand, tomorrow at midnight, or you'll swim with the fishes. Ha, ha, ha.” She hung up. “Oops. I said ‘Ha' and messed up the day and time, didn't I?”

I let Flori do the reassuring. “It's fine,” she said. “For the best. Tomorrow gives us more time to get ready. All we have to do now is call the two other numbers and, if someone answers, say the very same thing, okay Addie? Think of that as a practice run.”

The second number rang fifteen times before we all agreed that Addie should hang up. For the last number, I counted a dozen rings. Flori murmured prayers and crossed her fingers. Then the ringing stopped.

“Oy!” Addie said in a burst of Australian. “I know what you did, mate. Be at the bandstand, midnight tonight! We make a deal, or I'm calling the cops.”

She hung up, hands shaking. “Shoot! I messed up big-time. I said tonight, didn't I? Midnight! That's late, isn't it? I got scared.” Before Flori or I could ask, she said, “All I heard was breathing. There was someone there, listening. I can't believe I said tonight. You're not really going to meet them, are you? I could call back and cancel or reschedule.”

Flori was getting up, one hand on the particularly arthritic knee that gave her trouble when bad weather approached. “Visiting hours at the jail,” she said, pointing to the wall clock.

There would be no calling back to cancel. Addie knew that too. “Well then, I'm jolly well coming with you tonight,” she said.

S
etting an appointment with a killer has some major drawbacks. There's the waiting, which I hate. Of course, there's the part about meeting with a murderer too. I spent some of the time with Celia, taking her out to Andiamo, our favorite Italian place. Over dinners of lasagna and butternut ravioli, I got a bit emotional. “Celia, if anything ever happens to me, you know I love you,” I said. “More than anything.”

Celia stabbed a ravioli. “Sure, okay, Mom.”

“And your father's a good man. He made a mistake about Linda, that's all.” And about all his philandering and fussy food preferences, although even in my emotional state I wouldn't bring those up.

“Okay . . .” Celia said, frowning. “What's going on, Mom?”

I wasn't about to involve my daughter. I glossed over the murderer part. “I have a late appointment tonight. No big deal. Something with Flori. Would you like to stay overnight with your dad?”

“I'm not a kid, Mom. I think that Hugo and I can fend for ourselves.” She snagged a bite of my lasagna. “But sure, if you want.”

I stopped myself from blathering on about what she should do and know if I never returned. Instead, I chipped away at the delicious charred cheese on the side of my lasagna dish and chided my nerves. Flori would be there, armed with her Taser and tape recorder. I'd be wearing my own tape recorder. Addie would be there too, and she said she'd bring her cousin Jesús, the airbrusher. Jesús was also a wrestler, specifically a minor superstar of the local
lucha libre
circuit. He wore a mask and spandex pants, had a signature move of smashing prop guitars on opponents, and worked under the stage name El Macho.

“He has a running gig at the Golden Owl,” Addie had told us. “He's not all that big, but he's good at hitting stuff, and with his mask and all his makeup, he's kind of scary.” She'd shivered and added, “What's really scary was that person breathing on the phone. That was terrifying.”

J
ake called when I got home from dropping Celia off in front of Manny's place. “Care for a margarita?” he asked. “It is Cinco de Mayo . . .”

Yes!
I wanted to yell. “Ummm . . .” I said instead. “Flori and I have this thing tonight.” I couldn't go tipsy to a blackmail meeting, and I didn't want Jake to know what I was planning. I suspected that he wouldn't approve of fake extortion of a real extortionist/murderer at midnight.

“Girls night out again?” Jake said, his tone suggesting skepticism.

“Right,” I said, through guilt pangs.

“Rita,” he said. “If you're tailing someone—”

“We're not! No tailing,” I said, and realized how snippy that sounded. “I mean . . .” We weren't tailing. We were luring a murderer, which was worse, since we didn't know who to expect.

A long silence on the other end made my stomach flop.

“How about tomorrow night?” I asked. “There'll be fewer people out.”

He had a work dinner tomorrow. “We keep missing each other, don't we?” he said, and my heart sank. Maybe the new point in our relationship wasn't one going forward. Maybe we'd realize that we didn't mesh. Jake had another call coming in. “I'll call you again later,” he said, and I hoped he meant it.

F
lori, Addie, and I met at eleven thirty across the street from the bandstand, under the covered walkway of the Palace of the Governors. A nearby streetlamp flickered, casting shadows down the brick walkway. We moved to the shelter of the
deep inset doorway of the Palace. Addie had come straight from a singing gig and shivered in her black cocktail dress and fluffy shawl. Flori wore her black karate suit and a trench coat with bulging pockets. She handed me a tape recorder and offered me my choice of Taser, knife, or gun.

“It's Linda's,” she said of the gun. “I always told her she shouldn't have such a thing.”

I feared guns. I'd likely drop it and shoot my own foot before defending myself. Same with the Taser. The one time I'd tried it, I accidentally zapped a parking meter out of commission. I considered a knife. Knives I could handle. On the other hand, I could never imagine sticking another human. I declined. “I have my phone and the tape recorder in my pocket. You two are my backup. Text if you see someone suspicious coming.”

Addie's brow wrinkled. “Jesús called and said he can't make it. He has a special Cinco de Mayo match.”

“No worries,” I lied, thinking how great it would be to have El Macho in his mask as backup. I repressed a nervous giggle, imagining a pro-wrestling scenario. I
was
worried. The throngs of young people who'd been out celebrating earlier were nearly gone. A single man wobbled across the Plaza. Over by the closed Five and Dime, a group of guys laughed drunkenly.

We took up our positions. Addie went around the corner to a side door of the Palace, where she could watch the streets to my north and west. Flori took cover in her car, which she'd parked near the southwest corner of the Plaza. From there she could see most of the Plaza, or at least as much
as her bifocals and binoculars allowed. I went to the back side of the bandstand, standing near but not on the spot where Napoleon was killed. From my vantage point, Flori's white whale of a Cadillac glowed under the streetlight. All I could see of her was an occasional flash from her binoculars.

I kept in the shadows with my back to the bandstand so that no one could sneak up behind me. Or so I thought. A few minutes later a whispered “Hey” nearly knocked me over. I righted myself and fumbled to turn on the tape recorder in my jacket pocket.