Maggie and the Hidden Homicide Read online

  "Your dad is Lucky Lopez?" Donovan asked. "I loved his ads on Telemundo when I was a kid."

  "Yeah," Maggie said, blushing a bit. "He was always such a big ham. I used to think it was embarrassing when I was little, but I miss his silliness now that he's gotten so successful and rebranded himself as a big-time Silicon Valley luxury car dealer."

  "I think it's normal to think our family is embarrassing when we're young, but we miss them when they're gone," Taiyari said softly, showing that wisdom beyond her years that Maggie had noticed before.

  "Where's your family now?" Maggie asked, "if you don't mind the question."

  "I'm alone now," she said softly.

  "You're not alone," said the young man who'd been sitting with her earlier. Donovan reluctantly took a step back to allow the man to stand next to Taiyari. "You have a lot of people who love you."

  Maggie had a feeling that was true in more ways than one. She watched the subtle tension between the men, and it reminded her of the older man who'd been watching the girl so fixedly earlier. She glanced around and didn't see him. She did see yet another older man, one with a face so much like this new boy that he must be his father. That man, too, stared at the girl, or more accurately, at the girl and boy. It was hard to read his expression, but there was definitely something serious on his mind as he watched them.

  "This is Ethan Kirby," Taiyari said, introducing him to the group.

  "Oh," Maggie said. "This is your family's farm."

  "Yes," he said absently. Still focused on the girl to the exclusion of all else, he smiled at Taiyari. "I need to talk to you," he whispered to her.

  She shook her head. "Later," she whispered back, then gave a quick glance around to see if anyone else heard. She noticed Maggie watching, and said aloud, "if you'd like to see my grandmother's beadwork, I can show you before you leave."

  "I'd love that," Maggie said, letting her turn the conversation in another direction. "I have so many questions."

  "Maybe I can answer them," Taiyari said.

  She and Maggie sat down together at one of the small tables. There wasn't room for the others, so the men reluctantly found somewhere else to sit. The girl seemed to be unaware of the disappointment the two men felt at being unable to sit with her. But Maggie had a feeling, given her quick-wittedness, that Taiyari was ignoring the problem, not unaware of it.

  Jasper lay at Maggie's feet in the dirt. He put his paw on her foot to keep her from leaving him, and waited eagerly for a piece of beef to fall magically from the sky into his mouth. He didn't have long to wait.

  She took a nice chunk of the tri-tip and fed it to him, then turned to her own meal.

  She set the beaded skull on the table between her and Taiyari, and then they talked about it all through the meal.

  "My grandmother is the real artist," she explained. "I have about a dozen of her pieces, and that's what I will show you later. You can come to our home and see them all. I live right over there." She nodded her head toward that dark clump of trees Maggie had seen earlier. "Then you'll understand the difference between my beginner effort and the true art of the Wixáritari."

  "So she taught you about it?" Maggie asked.

  The girl nodded. "I only learned how to do the beading in the last couple of years," she explained. "That's when my grandmother came to take care of me."

  She explained that she was born in the U.S., and her parents, migrant farmworkers, had devoted their lives to seeing that she got an education. It was their lifelong dream for their child to escape the grinding poverty and heavy physical work they'd spent their lives doing.

  But just when all seemed to be going well, and they'd settled in Carita Valley so she was finally able to attend a good high school, her parents had suddenly died in a car accident, leaving her alone in the migrant camp at the age of fourteen.

  She was forced to go live with her grandmother in the tiny Wixáritari village in Mexico, among people who spoke a language she didn't know and lived lives she knew nothing about, and she had given up her family's dream of going to college.

  But her grandmother quickly realized that Taiyari needed to follow her dreams in her home country. So her grandmother brought her back to America, so she could return to her familiar high school.

  The old woman had been a powerful leader in her little community, but here she became a simple farmworker, doing backbreaking work that left her passing out exhausted on the single bed in their migrant worker quarters every night.

  But Taiyari would stay in school if it killed her grandmother. The old woman swore it.

  "And it did," Taiyari said softly. She picked at the beans on her plate. "She died in her sleep last month. The work was too hard, and she was too old." She put her head down and Maggie saw a tear fall down and hit the plate. "And it's my fault."

  "Oh, honey," Maggie said. She put her hand on the girl's and patted it. "I'm so sorry. Of course it isn't your fault."

  Jasper stood up and put his long nose in the girl's lap, trying to comfort her.

  She petted him gently, and he leaned into her, trying hard to make her feel better.

  Then she sniffed decisively and shook her head, willing away the sadness. "I'm okay. I'm not going to give up on my dream. My parents wanted me to succeed. And my grandmother. And so I will. I will keep going." Her eyes were brilliant with tears when she looked back at Maggie, but there was a firm set to her jaw.

  Maggie smiled back at her. "I believe you, Taiyari. If anyone can do it, I believe you can."

  After the sun had set, someone brought out a little boom box that must have been thirty years old, and they tuned it to a Latin Pop station.

  Some of the children started dancing, but most of the adults were too tired, and they sat around, smiling and watching the kids.

  Maggie went over to where Reese sat, chatting with Ethan Kirby and another man Reese introduced as his father, Brian Kirby. He was the man who'd been staring at the boy earlier.

  "It's nice of you to throw this party for the migrant workers," Maggie said to Mr. Kirby.

  He brushed it off with a shrug. "We've always done it. They do good work for us."

  Ethan looked down at his hands and said nothing. Again, that tension, which Maggie now wondered might include a dispute between father and son.

  But then Mr. Kirby saw Taiyari standing off by herself and smiled faintly, and Maggie figured she had misinterpreted his possible disapproval of his son dating one of the workers.

  Kirby confirmed it when he said with a smile, "I know you'd rather talk to your girlfriend, Ethan. You don't have to hang out with your old dad."

  Ethan stared at Taiyari, not even seeming to hear his father's words.

  Susan Gallegos and Donovan Cruz came their way. That got Ethan to stop sitting there glumly.

  When they came over, he coldly excused himself and went over to talk to Taiyari.

  "May we have a word with you?" Donovan asked Mr. Kirby.

  "If it's about the electricity in the trailers, I told you I can't afford to upgrade it this year," he said with a sigh. "The county inspector said it was good enough the way it is."

  "Good enough?" Donovan asked, speaking softly but clearly holding back his anger. "Sir—"

  Then he stopped himself. He glanced at Maggie and Reese, and they both quickly stood up and excused themselves. "Let's see if the cook has any leftovers for Jasper," Maggie said, and they walked away.

  They headed back to the grill. They passed Taiyari and Ethan, who were talking in furious whispers.

  "Let me explain," he was saying.

  The girl pulled her hand away when he reached for it. "You can't explain. You can't think I could love you after this."

  "Please," he begged. He saw Maggie staring as they passed and said, "let's go somewhere private. I swear I'll tell you everything."

  Maggie glanced at Taiyari's face as they passed. She was wavering, clearly finding Ethan attractive, but not liking whatever unforgivable thing she thought he'd done
. "Come to my place," she said. "But you'd better tell me the whole truth this time."

  Then they were out of earshot and Maggie didn't hear any more.

  Chapter Four

  After getting Jasper's treat, they ran into Abby. She had put her reporter's notebook away and was leaving the party. "Thanks for inviting us," Maggie said, and she smiled.

  "I'm glad you came. I've gotta go write up my notes now. But stay as long as you want." Then the girl looked around. "Have you seen Donovan? I wanted to get another quote about the fundraiser from him."

  "Last we saw, he was talking to Mr. Kirby."

  She shrugged. "He's not there now. I'll have to text him later. I've got class in the morning and I have to get some sleep or I'll never make it." She gave Maggie a quick hug and left.

  They wandered back to the party.

  An hour later, Maggie used the (thankfully clean) porta-potty, then went to find Reese.

  She found him sitting with Mr. Kirby, who was telling him all about tomato propagation. Reese was nodding and apparently listening intently. Jasper, having finished with his meat, lay snoozing at Reese's feet.

  "You ready to go?" he asked when she came over.

  "Almost. I just need to find Taiyari and see her grandmother's beads, and then we can take off. Can you watch Jasper for a minute?"

  Reese gave her a quick, pleading glance, clearly wanting to be rescued from the details of tomato growing, but she just smiled and left him to extricate himself from the conversation on his own.

  She asked someone where Taiyari was. The young woman, who appeared to be about Taiyari's age but was married and heavily pregnant, spoke up. "You're Maggie? She was looking for you. She said she wanted you to see her grandmother's beads. She said you should go to her house if she hasn't come back."

  She pointed Maggie toward the worker housing, which was beyond the trees at the far end of the field. "Siete," she said, and Maggie nodded.

  "Number seven?" Maggie said. "Got it." She headed that way.

  She needed a flashlight, she soon realized. She pulled out her iPhone and turned on the flashlight app, then used its cool white glow to find her way on the well-worn path. Her phone's light began to fade as she walked. She checked it and realized she was almost out of battery power. She walked faster.

  Within minutes the path led her through the thin stand of trees. Beyond the trees were several beat-up trailers set seemingly haphazardly among thistles and waist-high grass. There was a row of outhouses to one side, and the aroma emanating from them was not exactly welcoming.

  There didn't seem to be anyone around, with most of the workers enjoying the rare respite of the barbecue on this cool fall evening.

  The first trailer she passed was a burned-out hulk. She shone her rapidly dimming light on it and saw the charred remains of clothes and a melted tea kettle in the rubble. The fire looked fairly recent, though there had been time enough for some weeds to begin to grow through the twisted metal frame. Luckily the fire had not spread to the other trailers, which were clearly all being used as housing.

  From the next trailer she heard loud snoring through the open window, and smiled. Someone was enjoying the chance to get some extra sleep before heading back to work in the morning.

  Number seven, the woman had said. Maggie wandered through the little clearing with its criss-crossing dirt paths from trailer to trailer until she saw a little one with some of its aluminum siding missing. When she got to it, sure enough, it was marked with a "7" in spray paint next to the door. The place made her own tiny house look huge. It was a 1960s camper the shape of a canned ham, with a curved roofline and what had once been a jaunty turquoise stripe along its side. It rested on rusted wheels with no tires, and there were ragged work clothes hanging from a clothesline next to the door.

  There was a bright orange extension cord snaking through the grass to a plug in the side of the trailer, and a hose that meandered some hundred feet from the nearest spigot was neatly coiled on the trailer hitch. A bright green weed had taken advantage of the drip from the hose to plant itself at the end of the tongue of the trailer. It had reached three feet high, and sprouted bristly yellow foxtails that waved in the faint glow of her flashlight.

  The same breeze that moved the foxtail was pushing at the door to the trailer. It screeched softly with each gentle push from the wind. It was an outward-swinging door, and Maggie grabbed the handle and pulled it open. It protested with an even more ear-splitting creak.

  "Taiyari? It's me, Maggie," she said into the darkness.

  Only silence answered her. She was apparently not home. But the fur on Maggie's arms stood up and she gasped.

  There was a smell in the trailer. A tangy, metallic smell that made her skin crawl. She almost backed out at the smell, but couldn't. She had to see. Had to. Didn't want to. But had to.

  She knew that smell. She'd encountered it before, and now her body reacted with revulsion at the faintest whiff of it. She beat back the sickness that rose in her throat. She had to go on.

  "No, no, no," Maggie whispered. That beautiful girl, with her sparkling personality, quick mind, and the whole world of potential inside of her….

  Her phone took that moment to dim even further, but she thought she could see something on the floor inside. Leave, her mind told her. Leave this place. You don't want to see.

  She closed her eyes, and felt along the wall of the trailer for a light switch. Found it. Heard it click on.

  She stood there for what must have been a solid minute, with the light on and her eyes closed, not wanting to see.

  The breeze pushed the door against her back and made her open her eyes, startled. And then there was no unseeing what was in the room.

  Her instinct had been right. And wrong. Relief and horror battled in her mind, and all she wanted to do was get out of there.

  She could turn around. She could walk away. She could go back to the party and try to forget the image that had been instantly and forever etched into her brain when she'd opened her eyes.

  But of course she couldn't. She took a step into the room, then stopped, realizing there was evidence all over the floor and she had to stay back to preserve it.

  Evidence of murder.

  And there was no doubt it was murder.

  But it wasn't Taiyari. She crossed herself in relief, then felt ashamed, because even if it wasn't the girl, it was someone. Someone who was now dead.

  Some man, laid out on the floor in a sea of red that added a bright patch to the faded tan of the cracked linoleum floor. The floor's pattern was of daisies, in the kind of retro orange and yellow tones that would make a vintage design fanatic swoon with envy. This pattern was no reproduction, though. It was original, and in most spots had faded away almost to nothing, with the faint outlines of cheery flowers mere darker tan outlines against the beige of the background.

  There was a bench on the far end of the space, with a tiny table in front of it. On the bench was a thin cushion that was piled with colorful blankets and a pillow that looked like the kind of tourist memento you found in a Mexican marketplace, shaped like a llama and made from brightly patterned wool. It looked very old, and was missing an ear. At the opposite end of the trailer was a tiny kitchenette with a turquoise stove that must not be working, because there was a piece of plywood laid across it, and a utilitarian hot plate rested there. A pitcher of water apparently gathered from the hose outside stood next to it, and the two storage drawers were standing open, with silverware and packets of spices visible inside. There was no bathroom, which explained the outhouses she'd seen.

  But all that didn't matter, of course. For in the middle of the room was a man's body. Face down in the midst of the tiny space, covering almost every inch of the floor. His legs, clad in jeans and work boots, touched the base of the turquoise stove. And his head was under the little table by the bench, lost in shadow. Her mind frantically went back to the party, trying to remember what each of the men had worn. They'd all worn jeans, ha
dn't they? Had she noticed any of their feet?

  She knew there was a way to see who the man was, but she wasn't going to do it. Wasn't going to go closer.

  The table he was lying under was about two feet square, rising from a metal pole that was bolted into the floor, and it was stacked with papers. Some of the papers had been knocked off when the man's body had hit the table, and they had scattered all over, covering the body.

  But they didn't totally cover the floor. There were footprints visible on the linoleum, small ones, the right size to belong to an eighteen-year-old girl, and they marked where she had moved all around the crowded little space, tracking the man's blood this way and that until the person had finished whatever she was doing and left the room.

  And in the center of the tableau was a knife.

  It was like the punctuation to the scene. All the scattered cheap items that marked the hardscrabble life of working people just barely getting by, and then the dead body in the center of it, and then, to create the perfect contrast, a knife. Not a knife from that shoddy little kitchenette. But an incredible knife, its handle covered in an ocean of tiny seed beads in vibrant blues, greens and yellows, in patterns of peyote flowers and suns and frogs. A piece of Wixáritari art that should be in a museum.

  But it was instead sticking into the back of the man on the floor, up to the hilt.

  And the man was totally still.

  And the papers had landed on his body as he'd fallen, bumping the little table and scattering its contents, and one of the papers stared up at Maggie as she stood there horrified.

  The paper was a letter, and it began, "We are pleased to accept you into the university class of…."

  Chapter Five

  Lieutenant Will Ibarra was a big man, almost as tall as Reese, but with the muscular body of a cop who fought his love of cinnamon rolls by lifting weights three times a week. He had salt-and-pepper hair, and a face that could appear either handsome and warm with humor, or harsh and clinical.