“Yes.”
“And you, Felipe, what did you do?”
“I dropped the body off the end of a pier, then I drove across the border. It was the beginning of a weekend, there were hundreds of other people waiting to cross. No one was looking for me and no one at the ranch noticed the pickup was missing. If they had, my father would have covered for me.”
“I’m sure he would. Yes, Estivar is very sentimental about his sons. You can hear it in his voice when he says my sons. My sons, as if he were the only one who had ever had a son—” Her voice had begun to tremble and she paused for a minute to regain control. “And that’s the whole story, Felipe?”
“Yes.”
“It hardly seems worth all the money I offered, especially since there were two quite serious mistakes in it.”
“I told you the truth. I want my money.”
“Both mistakes concerned Robert. He didn’t get sick of Ruth Bishop. On the contrary, they were planning to go away together. I naturally couldn’t allow that. Why, she was old enough to be his mother. I ran her off the place like a stray bitch... The other mistake was about the two-by-four you saw Robert throw into the reservoir. It had blood on it, his father’s blood, but Robert hadn’t put it there. He was protecting me. We must keep the record straight.”
“I want my money,” he said again. “I earned it.”
“And you’ll get it.”
“When?”
“Right now. The safe is in the front bedroom. You can open it yourself.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know how. I never—”
“You just turn the dial according to my instructions. Come along.”
The safe was built into the floor of the bedroom closet and concealed by a rectangle of carpeting. She removed the carpeting, then stood aside while Felipe knelt in front of the safe.
“Left to three,” she said. “Right to five. Left to—”
“I can’t make out the numbers.”
“Are you short-sighted?”
“No. It’s too dark in here. I need a flashlight.”
“I think you’re short-sighted.” She picked up Robert’s horn-rimmed glasses from the bureau. “Here, you’ll be able to see better with these.”
“No. I don’t need—”
“Try them on. You may be surprised at the difference.”
“I have good eyes, I’ve always had good eyes.”
But even while he was protesting she was putting the glasses in position on his face. They slid down past the bridge of his nose and she pushed them back in place. “There. Isn’t that an improvement? Now we’ll start over. Left to three. Right to five. Left to eight. Right to two.”
The safe didn’t open.
“Gracious, I hope I haven’t forgotten the combination. Perhaps it’s left to five to begin with. Try again. Don’t hurry it. I can’t let you rush off immediately anyway.” She reached out and touched the top of his head very gently. “We haven’t seen each other for a long time, son.”
During the night one of the neighbors woke to the sound of a piano and went to sleep again.