Maggie and the Hidden Homicide Page 9

  She had expected him to respond with anger at the mention of the girl who had supposedly murdered his son, but he didn't. He just looked overwhelmed with grief and loss.

  "I don't know what good it will do," he said. "The police have been over every inch of the place. It just… there's no sense to any of it."

  "It is senseless," Maggie agreed. "I guess that's part of why I wanted to talk to the people who knew Ethan and Taiyari. To try to understand."

  Mr. Kirby broke down then, though he tried to cover it with gruffness. "Then do that. I don't care. It doesn't matter anymore. Nothing matters."

  He walked away, and they watched him head down the dirt road. In the far distance was the farm house. Maggie hadn't paid much attention to it at the barbecue, as it had been mostly hidden by the darkness then. Now she saw it was a plain, utilitarian place, probably as old as the Kirby farm. She watched that sad old man, shoulders bent, heartbroken, slowly walk to his empty home.

  "We shouldn't have come, Maggie," Reese said. "These people are hurting."

  Jasper leaned somberly against her side, seeming to say the same thing.

  "We still have some time before we meet your realtor to look at more houses. We can at least talk to people," she said stubbornly.

  They headed off into the field to find the workers.

  It turned out, she didn't need Reese to translate for her. All the people there spoke at least a bit of English.

  But there weren't many people there. It appeared only about a third of the crew was in the field, even though there was still a lot of work to do.

  They were going down the rows of tomatoes, gleaning the last straggling bits of the crop before the field was cleared for another planting.

  "Let me guess," she asked an older man who stood up painfully when they approached. "The others are hiding."

  "Not hiding," he said carefully, rubbing his back. "They left. Went away."

  "The undocumented ones?" Reese asked, and the man nodded.

  "Are they coming back?" Maggie asked.

  He looked doubtful.

  "They were afraid to get mixed up with a murder?" she said.

  "With the policia," he agreed. "And there were… other things."

  "What other things?"

  That stopped him cold. "I don't know about that." He bent over the row again, and that was the end of the conversation. When Maggie tried to ask more questions, he said briskly, "I have to go back to work."

  The others were the same. There was something there, a tension just like she had noticed the night of the barbecue. But no one would say what it was, much less whether it had anything to do with Ethan Kirby's death.

  It was clear these people were on the periphery of whatever the tension was. It didn't affect them directly.

  But they knew. Knew something that they hadn't been willing to tell the police. Something they weren't willing to tell Maggie.

  So she and Reese turned to go.

  A woman stopped them as they passed. "Can I pet your pretty dog?" she asked, and Maggie nodded.

  She was only a couple years older than Taiyari. Maggie realized she was the same young woman who had given her directions to find Taiyari's trailer the night of the murder. She appeared even more heavily pregnant in the light of day than she had that night. But still she was out working in the dusty field, bending over and finding the few tomatoes left on the vines, moving with the heaviness of someone very close to her due date.

  "Taiyari's my friend," she said quietly. "She should never have gotten mixed up with that Ethan Kirby."

  "Why?" Maggie asked softly. "He seemed like a cute young man."

  "Cute, maybe. But not nice."

  Jasper licked her hand and she smiled. Then she put her hand on her belly. "A nice man is more important than a handsome one," she said. Her hands were rough and cracked, and her plain wedding band was black with dirt from her work.

  "Like your own husband?" Maggie asked, and the woman gave a big smile. She glanced at someone two rows away, a husky young man with a kind face. He gazed back adoringly, then bent down to his work again.

  "I'm lucky," she said. "But Taiyari was not. Sometimes it's better not to be the prettiest one. It's easier to find true love."

  "You said it, sister," Reese muttered, and Maggie gave him a quick glance.

  "What's your dog's name?" she asked.

  "Jasper. I'm Maggie, and this is Reese."

  She nodded to them, but kept focused on the dog, almost as if she didn't want the others to pay attention to what she was saying. "I'm Carmen," she said softly. Then added, "He's a pretty dog," loudly enough for the others to hear.

  "So why do you say Ethan wasn't nice?" Maggie whispered.

  "I know he had a lot of girlfriends. The young girls liked him. The other people, though, never did."

  "Others? The people without papers?" Reese asked, keeping his voice low.

  She nodded. She continued in the same whisper. "My husband said he was a bad person, that's what people said. I thought maybe he was cheating on Taiyari with someone else, and that's why they said that about him. But no one would say it to her face. What kind of a dog is he?" she added in a full voice.

  "A Collie," Maggie said, just as loudly.

  "I told Taiyari about it," Carmen whispered, "about how they all said he was a cheat and liar. So she went to Ethan."

  "That's what they fought about," Maggie said, realizing it must have been the argument she witnessed. "He said he would explain everything."

  "He did?" This was news to Carmen. "So he went to her trailer to talk?" She put her head down. "It's my fault he was there. I shouldn't have told her."

  "No, it isn't," Maggie said swiftly. "And it doesn't mean she killed him."

  Carmen nodded. "I'm sure she didn't. Taiyari would never kill anyone. She was going to be a lawyer and help people like us, like her. That was her dream. Her family dreamed of her getting an education, and she did it. Even got accepted into college. She is the first person I know to ever do that. And then this happened. But nobody believes in her. They think she must be a criminal because she's one of us."

  Reese crouched down, petting Jasper. "Not everybody thinks that," he whispered.

  "I believe she's innocent, Carmen. I'm sure of it," Maggie insisted, still in that low whisper so the others didn't hear. "I just wish I could tell her that." She gave Carmen a significant look, but the girl shook her head.

  "I don't know where she is," she said, but her eyes said otherwise.

  "If a person could talk to her, they could find out if she knows why Ethan was murdered." Maggie looked her right in the eyes, waiting to see her reaction.

  Carmen nodded slightly, meeting her eye-to-eye. "If I talked to her, that would be the first thing I'd ask, and she would say she has no idea what happened. She just saw him dead and panicked and ran to hide from the police who would blame her."

  "I see," Maggie said. "If the police find her before she turns herself in, she might get shot. It's important for her to come in and tell them everything she knows."

  "They won't find her. She has a good—"

  "—hiding place?" Reese whispered.

  "No," Carmen said quickly. "I don't know where she is. I can't help you."

  Maggie nodded. "Okay. I understand." She paused, then added, "do you know that police can trace phone calls?"

  She gave a sly smile. "Not prepaid phones, though. There's no record of who they belong to."

  Maggie smiled back. "I see," she said. "Well, if I could talk to her myself, I would tell her that she has to come in and give a statement to the police eventually, or her life might be in danger. And there's a particular policeman named Lieutenant Ibarra. He's a good man, and would treat her fairly. If I could tell her that, that's what I would say."

  Carmen nodded. "Too bad I can't tell her that."

  "Yes," Maggie said as Reese stood up from petting the dog. "It's too bad. I understand."

  Carmen went back to her work, and they h
eaded back to the car.

  "Do you?" Reese asked.

  "What?"

  "Understand?"

  "Nope," Maggie said. "I feel just as lost as ever about why Ethan was murdered."

  "But we know the girl is alive and safe," he said.

  "For now," she said. "But for how long?" They got to the car and she put Jasper in his car harness.

  They got in and she started the engine.

  "Are you going to tell Ibarra what Carmen said?" he asked.

  She thought about it. "Not yet. They'll just arrest her. I'm hoping my little message will convince Taiyari to come in on her own."

  "Maybe," he said, but sounded doubtful.

  "But at least now I know what Ethan was talking about when he told Taiyari he was going to explain everything," she said. "It was why people hated him," she said.

  "It sounds to me like he just liked to play around with different girls," Reese said. "That's not a reason to kill him."

  "It could be. But I think there's something more going on than romance here. He was going to tell her something else."

  "Like what?" Reese asked.

  "When I find that out, I'll know who killed him," Maggie said.

  They left the workers in the fields and headed out to look at mansions.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They followed the realtor's directions out Carita Valley Road. Jasper stuck his head out the window and barked at the horses as they passed the same lush pastures.

  This time they took a different turn, one that led to the sprawling golf course estates lined with the mansions of the country club set.

  There were more impressive gates with security guards, more widely spaced homes soaring up above lush lawns.

  She followed the GPS until they came to a massive place in the pseudo-Mission style so popular all along the California coast.

  "Very Santa Barbara," she observed as they pulled to a stop in front of a huge building of creamy stucco, with red tile roofing and ornate black iron railings framing each upstairs balcony.

  The circular driveway was made, not of real aged red brick (which would have been gauche for this crowd), but of some expensive material designed to look just like aged brick. A stone fountain played grandly in the middle of the driveway, defiantly oblivious to water shortages.

  Bill, and his Rolls, were already there.

  They got out.

  Jasper whined, and Bill said "of course" when she asked if the place was dog-friendly, so she brought him along.

  It was a wonderful house. There wasn't a thing wrong with it. It had all the bells and whistles the spoiled rich could want, from a dozen bathrooms, to a swimming pool the color (and it seemed the size) of the Mediterranean, to a view out the living room directly onto the 9th hole of the club's nationally ranked golf course.

  They ended up in the kitchen, a luxurious affair with enough cabinets to outfit an army, acres of reddish granite counters to match the saltillo tile floors, and ornate, iron-framed stools nestled up to an island massive enough to land a plane on.

  Jasper sprawled out on the tile floor, letting his fuzzy belly cool off on the tile. Soon he was snoring, giving his approval to the house.

  Bill left them alone to talk for a bit, clearly hoping this was the home for Reese.

  Reese wasn't so sure. "Do you think Shane will like it?" he asked Maggie.

  She knew finding a real family home for Shane to come home to was a big part of Reese's goal with this real estate search.

  She looked around, trying to stay openminded. "Yeah. I think so. He liked Casablanca." He was the son of wealthy parents. He'd spent his life in houses like this. What difference did one more make? But she didn't say that aloud, trying very hard to stay openminded about the whole thing.

  She turned back to him. "Remind me again why you don't want to buy Casablanca?"

  "I can, if you want me to," he said. "It's only a few million, right?"

  She sighed. "That's not the question. I'm not asking you to bail me out. I'm sure I can find another spoiled rotten rich dude who needs to pick up a spare beach house."

  He wrinkled his nose at her.

  "But you've been reasonably happy renting Casablanca," she said. "So what are you looking for that you haven't found there? Or in your other five houses, for that matter?"

  He sat on one of the stools at the kitchen island and twirled back and forth, thinking seriously about it.

  "You've been to Deep Creek."

  "Of course," she said, thinking back on their visit to his childhood home, a tiny town up in the high desert of Northeastern California. He didn't feel comfortable living there anymore, with all the difficult memories it brought back of the teenage rock band he'd started there with his school friends, and the descent into addiction and tragedy that had followed the band's worldwide success.

  But his family's farm was filled with peace, a solid, unpretentious place where he was able to be Stanley Tibbets, not movie star Reese Stevens. The old Beanpole Dairy with its postcard-perfect red barn and white farmhouse had felt a million miles away from the Hollywood glamour in which he'd spent the last twenty years.

  What had Reese's father said to her on that visit? He'd been out in the barn, sweeping up straw as the glossy dairy cattle slept peacefully with their calves nearby. She could picture his dad, a lanky man with the same good looks as his son, but touched with gray, leaning on his broom and saying, "the boys told me I could go lie on a beach somewhere when they struck it rich. But I couldn't just lie around. I needed something to do." So Reese had paid off the family farm, and his dad puttered, caring for his animals and making gourmet organic cheeses, because it gave him a sense of purpose lazing around could never do.

  She reminded Reese of what his dad had said, adding, "of course you already have a career—"

  "—if I ever return Nora's calls and choose another film project," he muttered.

  "Yes. So you don't want a real farm, with all the responsibility. But this?"

  She looked out the window at the beautifully maintained course. "What would you do here? Watch guys in plaid pants walk by all day?"

  He picked up a country club brochure from the counter. "Tennis, swimming, badminton."

  "Badminton?" She gave him a doubtful look.

  "I don't know," he replied with a shrug. "I don't want a working farm. If I do another film—"

  "—If? You're going to give Nora a heart attack with that kind of talk." She smiled at him, and he gave her a weak smile in return.

  "Okay, when I do another film, I can't see leaving a whole herd of cows or a pasture full of sheep behind. If I have to hire a dozen staff to care for the place when I leave, it will be as bad as…."

  "As yesterday's lonely ranch," she finished. "So not a farm. Or a ranch." She came closer and put her hand on his shoulder, making him stop his incessant twirling back and forth on the stool. "Does this place make you happy?"

  He froze. "Happy?" he asked, as if the thought had never occurred to him.

  "Yeah, happy," she said. "What would make you happy?"

  He sighed. "Maybe I should just buy Casablanca."

  "That would solve my financial problem," Maggie agreed. "But I thought you needed something else."

  He looked out at the golf course, where, sure enough, a couple of guys in garish pink and orange outfits came up to the hole to putt.

  "I feel like I need something new," he said. "Something to help me start over fresh."

  "To heal from what happened when you relapsed," she said, and he nodded.

  "Yeah. A clean slate. I could just go to Tahiti or something, I suppose." He smiled at her a bit weakly. "You up for a vacation?"

  But she shook her head. "I have a business to run. And anyway, I like it in Carita. I don't want to run away."

  "Run away," he whispered, turning back to stare out the window. "That's the thing. I'm not trying to run away. When we talked about it before I went to rehab, I thought I knew what I wanted. I want to put down some
roots."

  "A place like the farm where you grew up," she agreed.

  "Yeah," he said. "I want to build something like that. A home for me. And for my son. A place for him to come home to when he leaves boarding school."

  "You said you were ready to grow up," she remembered.

  "Yeah. To stop drifting and make something of my life."

  "You've already made something of yourself," she pointed out.

  He shook his head. "I've made a career. Two careers. I've made money. But not a life. That's what I want to do now." He turned to her. "I want your honest opinion, Magdalena."

  "All right," she said. "I don't think this is where you will build the life you're searching for. It's no better than any other place you own, so there's no reason to buy it."

  He nodded. "You're right."

  When the realtor came back, she listened as Reese told him that. Not in those words. Bill wouldn't understand what he meant, anyway. Most people wouldn't. How could Reese explain to a stranger that he felt lost at sea, drifting without purpose, when people only saw his money and fame and success?

  So Maggie spoke to Bill a bit, about what Reese needed. A place that was not for impressing others, but a retreat. Luxurious, sure, in keeping with his wealth and appetite for comfort, but still a relaxing family home. "Something spa-like," she finished. "Something comfortable."

  "Something Zen," Bill said, nodding. "Got it. And I think I know just the property. Let me make a couple of calls."

  Soon they were back in Maggie's purple car and following Bill's Rolls a few miles down another winding private road.

  The road climbed for a bit until they eventually came to a stop on a narrow gravel parking area at the top of a hill.

  She pulled her Fit to a stop next to his Rolls in the dappled shade of some twisted pine trees, noticing how the two cars took up the entire parking area.

  They all got out, their shoes crunching on the driveway, which was covered in pale crushed stone.

  Jasper yelped when his paws hit the rough rock, and Maggie quickly put him back in the car. "How about you sit this one out, boy?" she said, and shut the car door on him.

  She got back in the driver's seat and rolled down the windows, then got back out. "Stay here in the shade," she told him, and he rested his long head on the car door and sniffed the cool air.