The only thing left for me to do was beg. My voice cracked as I spoke. “Please, Jaime,” I said again. “Please don’t.”
Finally I seemed to have his undivided attention and maybe I was getting through, but just then I heard Mel’s voice shouting frantically in my ear.
“Yellow Hummer coming your way with a man and woman inside. I told them we’re from Windermere Real Estate. That you heard he might be interested in selling the property and you came here in hopes of getting the listing.”
But even though Mel was screaming at me, I didn’t take my eyes off Jaime’s face. I couldn’t afford to.
“Someone’s coming, Jaime,” I said evenly. “Give me the gun. We can still walk away.”
I don’t know how long we stood staring at each other, me with my hand outstretched and him sitting casually on the seat of the swing. Behind me I could hear the low growl of the Hummer’s engine as it wound down through the trees. Any moment it would burst into the open and it would all be over. It would be too late.
At last Jaime bent down, put the gun in the bag, and handed it over.
“All right,” he said, “but if it turns out you’re lying…”
The Hummer braked to a stop at the edge of the driveway. A man leaped out and came charging across the lawn. The woman stayed where she was.
“This is private property,” the man yelled. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Someone told me you were interested in selling.”
“Whoever told you that was wrong. Now get the hell out of here!”
Jaime looked at him with unmistakable fury, then looked away. He had made his choice and he was abiding by it no matter what it cost him because Jaime Carbajal was a man of his word.
“Sure thing,” I said to Rios, giving Jaime a slight shove in the direction of the driveway. “Sorry to bother you.”
As we trudged back up the driveway, I may have been huffing like a steam engine, but to my astonishment, my knees didn’t hurt.
Not at all.
By the time we reached the trees, Jaime Carbajal was sobbing. It could have been letdown or grief or even a little of both. At the top of the driveway, Mel was waiting in the Mercedes. She had the doors unlocked and the engine running.
“Get in,” she urged. “Let’s get out of here. We can come back for the other cars later.”
And so Mel drove. Like a bat out of hell, of course. After fastening my seat belt, I handed Jaime my phone. “You’d better give Sheriff Brady a call,” I said. “She’s waiting to hear from you.”
As Jaime took the phone, Mel glanced in my direction. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“I couldn’t be better,” I said. “The good guys won.”
CHAPTER 18
I was surprised when Jaime Carbajal asked if I would serve as a pallbearer at Marcella’s funeral, but given everything that had gone before, I could hardly turn the man down. Mel and I flew down to Tucson late Monday afternoon. Jaime had managed to catch an earlier flight. His sister’s remains, transferred to a deep-blue casket, traveled in the cargo hold of that same aircraft.
Mel and I sucked it up and flew commercial. Going to Disneyland was one thing, but I couldn’t see blowing thirty thousand bucks so we could go to the funeral on a private jet. Besides, once you’ve done that, flying first class seems downright affordable.
Mason Waters, looking miserable and uncomfortable in a rumpled sports jacket and a badly knotted tie, filed past us on his way to coach. He nodded in our direction, but he didn’t say anything. I was glad Jaime had invited him to come, but I was sorry about it as well. He was grieving, and I couldn’t help but wonder how he’d be received by Jaime’s parents and the rest of Marcella’s bereaved family.
I needn’t have worried. Jaime had someone waiting at the airport to pick Waters up and drive him to Bisbee. Mel and I had made arrangements to rent a car, and we drove ourselves. The last time I had driven to Bisbee I had been in another rental, an underpowered Kia that barely made it over the mountain pass just outside of town. This time our new Caddy DTS had no such problem. We checked into the Copper Queen Hotel, where we were booked into the John Wayne Suite.
By the time we got to the funeral home on Tuesday afternoon, it seemed as though Mason had been taken into the bosom of the Carbajal family. He sat in the front row, between a woman who turned out to be Marcella’s mother, Elena, and a scrawny teenaged boy who, I learned later, was Marcella’s son, Luis. I wondered if Jaime had told Luis yet that he had a full-ride scholarship to the college of his choice.
When the priest spoke about Marcella as a troubled young woman who had been working to turn her life around, Mason broke down into shuddering sobs. It was Elena who put her arm around the man’s heaving shoulders and gave him a comforting hug. That was when I noticed the watch on her wrist-a brand-new Seiko. It pleased me to know that Mason Waters had chosen to give Marcella’s Christmas present watch to her mother.
I’m used to the well-manicured, perpetually green cemeteries we have in the Pacific Northwest. On that blustery April day, Bisbee’s so-called Evergreen Cemetery was anything but green or well manicured. We gathered in a surprisingly small group of twenty or so as Marcella’s Costco.com casket was lowered into the ground.
Mel and I were on our way back to the Caddy when someone called my name. I turned back to see Joanna Brady hurrying after us, followed by a man who, although he appeared to be somewhere in his early forties, was already completely bald.
“I couldn’t let you get away without thanking you for what you did for Jaime,” she said, taking my hand and pumping it. “What you both did,” she added, turning to Mel. “I’m Sheriff Brady. This is my husband, Butch Dixon.”
What might have been an awkward moment wasn’t. As Mel and Butch chatted amiably, I turned my attention on Joanna. She seemed older than she had been back when we first met. There was that indefinable something in her eyes-a natural sadness that comes from having seen too much. And I detected a tiny patch of gray in her otherwise bright red hair.
“If you hadn’t intervened…” Joanna continued.
“Look,” I said. “For a while there, wanting to take revenge got the upper hand. What finally carried the day is that Jaime Carbajal is a good man. More than that, he’s a good cop. If he had used that gun on Miguel Rios, Jaime would have been going against everything he believes in-everything we all believe in.”
“Yes,” Joanna said, looking up at me. “Sometimes walking away is the best thing you can do.”
In the old days I would have taken that remark at face value and assumed she was still talking about Jaime Carbajal. But I’m smarter now, at least as far as women are concerned. She had changed the subject.
“And believe me,” she added, “I really appreciate it.”
Moments later, she took Butch’s hand and the two of them did just that-they turned and walked away. I knew as they did so that whatever had happened or might have happened between Joanna Brady and J. P. Beaumont was over, completely over, once and for all. She had put it firmly in the past, and so had I.
“Come on, Mel,” I said. “We’ve got a plane to catch. Let’s go home.”