A Place in the Wind Page 15

  “Dad?”

  Vega removed the ice pack. He could see Joy’s face pale at the streaks of dried blood that marked his face and the sleeve of his uniform jacket. A fat dry-cleaning bill was coming his way. Just what he needed.

  “Chispita! Why aren’t you in class?”

  “I got to class and somebody told me that a cop had been hit by a bottle. You were the only one in uniform, besides the campus police.” She sat on a bench facing him. “Are you okay? Is there something I can do?”

  “It looks worse than it is,” Vega assured her. “Head wounds always bleed a lot. I’ll be fine.” He adjusted his ice pack and held her gaze. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “Me?”

  “I saw you in the crowd. With Mr. Ponytail.”

  “That was Dr. Jeff, my environmental-science professor.”

  “He put his arm around you.”

  “So?”

  “He does that with every coed?”

  “Things were getting crazy out there. He was trying to protect me.”

  “Yeah, he was protecting you all right,” said Vega. “That’s my job—not his.”

  She stiffened. “You were a little busy playing muscle for our new Hitler—”

  “Joy!” Vega gave her a disapproving look. “Whether you agree with Mike Carp or not, he was elected by a majority of the voters of this county. That doesn’t give anyone the right to assault him. Assault me.”

  “I know that, Dad. I feel terrible for what happened. That’s why I cut class to come see you. Hopefully, you’ll get a few days off after this, and”—she wrinkled her nose at his uniform—“you can go back to your regular work.”

  Vega felt an acid drip in the pit of his stomach. He never thought he could be homesick for a job. “I’m afraid this is my regular work now—”

  “What?”

  “I was reassigned.” He could see a protest forming on her lips. “This wasn’t my choice, okay?”

  “Does Adele know?”

  Vega shook his head. “I was going to tell her. But then she texted me that La Casa forced her to resign this morning.”

  “That’s terrible. For her, I mean,” said Joy. “In some ways, maybe it’s for the best.”

  “I doubt she feels that way,” said Vega. “In either case, I didn’t want to hit her with my news until I could speak to her in person.”

  Two EMS technicians appeared by the front doors of the gym. They didn’t have to guess who they were here for. Vega’s face made it pretty obvious.

  “You want me to ride to the emergency room with you?” asked Joy.

  “I want you to go to class, chispita. I’ll be fine. I’ll text you later.”

  * * *

  Vega expected to get dumped in an ambulance and left to his own devices. But when he arrived at the emergency room for treatment, Mike Carp was there, barking orders for Vega to be seen at once. Vega was ushered into a private room, where both an emergency room doctor and a plastic surgeon were on hand to look at his wound. Nurses and technicians hovered, asking if he was hungry or thirsty and how he was feeling. Everyone called him either “Detective” or “sir.”

  “Whatever you need, Jimmy,” said Carp. “You just say the word. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll be fine.”

  Outside Vega’s room, he heard Carp talking to one of the head doctors in the ER.

  “I want the best plastic surgeon you got. The best,” said Carp. “This officer’s not having some intern do embroidery practice on him. You got that?”

  Everyone hopped to Carp’s attention. Vega had a sense that even before Mike Carp was county executive, he was used to this kind of treatment. Vega wasn’t. He felt embarrassed that Carp talked to the doctors like they worked for him. But he could tell, too, the man’s heart was in the right place. He was upset that Vega had gotten injured protecting him. He wanted to set things right.

  While Vega was reclined, waiting for the surgeon to stitch him up, Carp walked into his room and closed the door. Vega felt surprisingly naked, even though he was fully clothed.

  “You’ve got guts, Jimmy. I like that.”

  “Thank you, sir, but I was only doing—”

  “I’d like you to be my driver.”

  “Your . . . driver?” Vega sat up on the examining-room table. “I thought you had—”

  “Staff change. My driver will go to Prescott and Vanderlinden. From now on, you’re working for me.”

  Vega stared at Carp, openmouthed.

  “Is there a problem, Jimmy? You look like I just asked you to dress in drag and dance the hula.”

  “Uh, no, sir. It’s just . . .” Not what I want. On the other hand, what Vega wanted wasn’t coming back. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  “I guess I wasn’t thinking about this whole . . . ,” Vega stumbled. “This driving thing . . . being permanent.”

  “Who says it has to be?”

  Captain Waring, thought Vega. Captain Lorenzo. Then again, Carp didn’t answer to Waring and Lorenzo.

  “Let’s first see what you can do, shall we?” asked Carp. “Then we can figure out where your talents lie. So . . . do we have a deal?” Was there really a choice here? Vega wondered. Either way, he was working for Mike Carp. Why not work for him directly? The man took care of his people. Vega could see that.

  “I would be happy to be your driver.”

  “Good.” Carp checked his cell phone. He looked anxious to leave. “I’m saying a few words at Catherine Archer’s vigil in Lake Holly this evening. If you’re up to driving me, I would appreciate it. Of course you can take the rest of the day off until then. Go home. Rest up.”

  “Thank you. I’ll do that.”

  Carp waved a dismissive hand at the uniform. “And come back in a suit, Jimmy. I don’t need the uniform. You look like you’re about to arrest somebody.”

  Chapter 20

  For the first time in Adele’s adult life, she was out of work. She couldn’t shake the sense of failure. The fear of the unknown. Could she find a job? Could she support herself? Her daughter? Growing up with undocumented parents, Adele learned that a lost job could spell financial ruin. All the small handholds that were available to poor Americans—food stamps, welfare, housing subsidies—did not exist for them. Homelessness and food scarcity were real possibilities. And okay, it wasn’t like that for Adele now. She was American-born. She had savings. An ex-husband who would help with child support. She knew that. Logically, she knew that.

  And yet she couldn’t shake the panic.

  She sat down with her checkbook and savings statement to try to figure out how long she could last without work. She didn’t want to take a job far from home. It would be too hard on Sophia. So—a nearby job. But what kind of job? At another nonprofit?

  Adele didn’t have a master’s in social work. Aside from La Casa, she had no background in the field at all. There weren’t many high-level positions in nonprofits in the county to begin with, and anything lower wouldn’t pay enough. The only likely position Adele could take and still support herself and Sophia would be to return to law. She’d kept her attorney registration up-to-date, filing every two years. But that only meant she had the right to practice. It didn’t mean she still had the skill set. Criminal law and immigration issues were her areas of expertise, but the rulings were forever changing. Not to mention that it had been years since she’d been in a courtroom.

  She could do other sorts of law, of course. She could sit behind a desk all day and review insurance documents and real-estate transactions. (Shoot me now.) She could handle divorces. (Peter was enough, thank you.) She could take on civil cases, contract breaches. (Helping rich people get richer.) With any of those, she would have to start at the bottom and learn the codes and practices all over again.

  I have to do whatever I can. For Sophia. No way did Adele want her daughter to feel the insecurity she’d known growing up. She could still remember those nights after her parents were cheated out of
their business by a neighbor with legal papers. Her father would make a big show of “getting in shape and losing some weight.” What he was really doing was walking three miles a day to his janitor’s job to avoid the cost of the bus. Sometimes he would come home after work with a vague scent of rotting food on his clothes and a rattling bag of aluminum cans that he toted like Santa Claus. A hundred cans. Two hundred cans. Only later did Adele understand what pride her father must have had to swallow to paw through people’s trash so she and her sister wouldn’t go without.

  She called Vega to tell him about her resignation. He didn’t pick up his phone, so she left him a text message. Then she called her best friend, Paola Rosado. Paola was an attorney for a big firm in Broad Plains. Adele asked if the firm had any freelance legal work—contracts, research—that Paola could send her way.

  “I can dig up some things,” Paola assured her. “But is that what you want?”

  “I want to put food on the table.”

  “We’re not back in our childhoods, okay?” said Paola. “You have savings. A house. Severance. Not to mention a gainfully-employed ex who is regular with child support. You won’t starve.”

  From anyone else, Adele might have bristled at such a statement. But Paola was Adele’s longest and best friend. They’d grown up in Port Carroll together, back when the bakery plant was still the prime employer in town and every cupboard and crevice smelled like warm bread. The Latino community was small in Port Carroll back then. And though Paola’s undocumented parents were from Colombia, not Ecuador, both Paola and Adele carried the scars of their childhoods like broken bones that never quite healed.

  “There’s no need to panic about paying your bills,” Paola assured her. “I can get you all the freelance you want while you look for something permanent. Just calm down, chica. It’s going to be okay.”

  Adele hung up from Paola’s pep talk and worked her way through ads for lawyers online, answering anything that was within a thirty-mile radius. The whole idea depressed her. After an hour, she needed a change of scenery so she drove to the supermarket. Max Zimmerman was out of the hospital. She figured she’d drop off some basics for him. She dashed around the aisles to avoid running into people she knew. She exchanged some of the things Vega bought yesterday (she didn’t have the heart to tell him) and bought some staples for Zimmerman: milk, bread, eggs, cheese, and bananas. She returned home, put her own food away, and then took the bag of groceries next door.

  “They released you so soon?” she asked when she saw him standing in his late wife’s pink bathrobe, leaning on a three-pronged cane.

  “What? I should stay? Let them make me sicker? They call it ‘medical practice’ for a reason, you know.”

  Adele laughed, pleased to learn that his hip was only bruised, not fractured. He could get around on a three-pronged cane, so long as he didn’t use the stairs. Fortunately, he had a small den on the first floor. A hospital supply company had installed a bed. There was a bathroom right off the kitchen. But still—he was too old and too frail to live alone.

  “You need someone to live with you and take care of you,” Adele told him. “I’m sure I could find someone from one of the social service agencies to help you out.”

  “I’m senior, not senile, Adele. I can take care of myself.”

  “I know that. But maybe having someone here . . . just for company.”

  “How do I know she won’t rob me blind?”

  “Have I ever sent someone to your house who you haven’t liked?”

  “That’s different,” he grumbled. “Those were men. Working outside. I’m not comfortable with some young female running around my house. Me, always worrying about covering up.”

  “I’ll find someone older.”

  “Then she’ll be on the phone all day with all her relatives!”

  “Mr. Zimmerman—you were just lucky Jimmy happened to notice that overturned chair. You could have been in your house for days like that. You shouldn’t live alone. If you won’t consider an aide, then how about assisted living? There are some lovely facili—”

  “A home? Where they tell me what to eat and what to wear? Absolutely not!” He pounded his three-pronged cane on the floor like a judge banging a gavel. Adele smiled because, of course, he was saying this in his dead wife’s fluffy pink bathrobe. “I can still take care of myself.”

  Adele remembered the gun that Zimmerman had upstairs and wondered if he had a different idea about what “taking care of himself” meant.

  She put a hand over his and squeezed it. “If you change your mind, you’ll let me know, okay?” She turned to leave.

  “Adele?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know what a ‘mensch’ is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s Yiddish for a person of integrity and honor. That’s what you are.”

  “Thank you. And don’t forget to lock the door.”

  * * *

  Adele let herself out and walked back to her house. A small gray BMW sedan was idling in her driveway. As Adele stepped closer, the driver cut the engine and got out of the vehicle. Adele froze in her tracks.

  “Miss Figueroa?”

  Todd Archer looked different from the last time Adele had seen him. His broad shoulders were hunched. His blond hair was greasy and uncombed. The sky-blue eyes—so much like Catherine’s—looked bloodshot and faded, no longer backlit from within. The anger had left him. But in its place was something spent and weary.

  “You called my family? To ask for a meeting?”

  “Um. Yes. Of course.” Dave Lindsey and the board practically handed Adele her head this morning for contacting the Archers without their permission. What would they make of this? Not to mention that the last time Adele had laid eyes on Todd, he was shouting at her. And now he was standing in her driveway.

  “I didn’t expect a face-to-face like this. At my house.” She scanned the street. There wasn’t even a dog walker about.

  “I guess I should have called first.”

  The sun broke through the clouds like a spotlight, somehow stronger for its absence. Archer brought a hand up to his brow to blot out the glare. The first time Adele met him, he seemed like a man, with those broad shoulders and close-cropped reddish beard. But up close like this, he gave off the aura of someone much younger and far more insecure.

  “See, the thing is,” Archer continued, “my folks don’t know I’m here.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them?”

  “They wouldn’t have wanted me to come. I guess they blame La Casa for what happened.”

  “I see.” Adele was still enough of an attorney to know that the word “blame” preceded the word “lawsuit” every time. Which meant every word she said from this point forward could end up being repeated back to her on a witness stand. It was one thing to have a sit-down with the family in front of La Casa’s lawyer. It was another to go freelancing. She chose her words carefully.

  “I’m so very sorry about what happened to your sister,” said Adele. “Catherine was loved by everyone at La Casa. We are all devastated by her loss. And yes, I called to ask your family to a meeting to talk about the situation. But things have changed on my end, I’m afraid. This morning, I resigned from La Casa. I’m no longer affiliated with the organization.”

  “For real?” asked Archer. “You quit? Just like that?”

  “I was asked to resign. But either way, it puts me in a difficult situation, Mr. Archer—”

  “Todd,” he offered.

  “Adele.” She touched her zippered jacket and smiled. “Given the circumstances, I can’t comment on anything to do with your sister’s murder except to offer my deepest condolences to you and your family.”

  “Huh.” He leaned against his car. A gust of wind fanned the hair on his scalp. His eyes turned teary. From the cold or grief, she couldn’t tell.

  “I don’t want to dump my problems on your doorstep like this,” he said. “But I don’t know where else to turn. You cared abo
ut Catherine. You tried to get her killer to surrender. You’re the only person who’s been on both sides of this.”

  “I don’t know what I can tell you,” said Adele. “The police can probably tell you more.”

  “The police just seem to be covering their asses at the moment.”

  Adele laughed. She would have thought that Todd Archer and the cops would be kissing cousins at the moment. He could be objective—which surprised her. She liked him immediately.

  The bare branches danced overhead in the stiff breeze, sending clumps of snow raining down on them. Adele felt the flakes, like needles, against her skin. She’d dressed to dash over to Zimmerman’s, not to have a long conversation outdoors. Todd’s nose and ears looked sunburned, they were so red.

  “Would you like to come inside and have a cup of coffee?”

  The young man stuffed his hands into the pockets of his leather bomber jacket and stood there, as hesitant as a prom date. “Are you sure?”

  “So long as it doesn’t go beyond us.”

  “It won’t. I promise.”

  In the kitchen, Todd settled himself at Adele’s Formica-topped table as she busied herself scooping coffee into her machine. It gave her somewhere to focus her attention.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I had no right to yell at you the other day.”

  “You are going through a lot,” said Adele. “It’s understandable.”

  He fiddled with a white plastic saltshaker, batting it back and forth between his long fingers like a hockey puck. Adele fished a package of Oreos from a shelf and put them in front of him. The only sound between them was the steady perk of the brewing coffee and the maracas-like shake of the salt as the shaker swayed in his hands.

  “Everyone is using my sister’s murder for their own ends,” he said finally. “It’s destroying our family. Our business. Our reputation in the community.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Adele.

  “Our waitstaff is afraid to come to work. My mother’s cleaning lady got a death threat in her mailbox. People we don’t know from across the country are sending us long, angry letters about how much they hate immigrants. They don’t even bother to differentiate between legal and undocumented. If they’re Latino and have an accent, they’re suspect.”