"Well, they are creepy."
"Not to me. I love every piece. They brought me to San Antonio. Four years ago, my senior year at Wisconsin-I was an art history major-I came down here for spring break. We were supposed to fly to Padre Island, but the charter plane had some mechanical problem, and we were stuck here for a day. I went into a gallery like this one, down in the King William neighborhood-Tienda Guadalupe-and I saw this wooden cross, studded with milagros."
"Milagros? I thought it meant miracles."
"It does, but it also refers to these charms, like these things on the cash register. See? Little hands and limbs, babies and hearts. They represent things you pray for. Anyway, I thought that cross was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. When I held it in my hand, I felt something, something warm. It was the wildest sensation. I bought it and took it back to Wisconsin. The day after graduation, I moved here. I didn't know a single person and people laughed at my Spanish, it was so fussy and academic. But from the start, I was at home here. Total GTT."
"Gone to Texas," Tess said. "Crow said the same thing, in a postcard he sent to his parents."
Kristina laid down her feather duster. "You don't get it, do you?"
"His dad explained it to me. Something about what fugitives carved on their doors."
"No, I mean the feeling. I was meant for Texas. Listening to Almas Perdidas, I sense Crow is, too."
"Maybe," Tess said. Crow was under some spell, but she couldn't figure out if it was San Antonio's or Emmie's.
Kristina just smiled and went back to dusting, tickling the long nose of a banana yellow ferret. Rick walked through the door, portable phone in hand, his voice in that winding-up mode that one has when trying to end a call, while the person on the other end drones on and on.
"Uh-huh, uh-huh. Thanks. Surest thing. We should. No, we definitely should. Okay, Okay. Uh-huh. Thanks." He inched the receiver that much closer to the base. "Definitely. Till then. No, I mean it."
At last, he hung up. "My source gave me a lead on a retired detective who worked the Darden-Weeks case, knew these guys as well as anyone."
"Was that the detective?"
Rick rolled his eyes and pulled at his collar as if it were choking him. "His wife. She says he went to Las Vegas on a charter, won't be back for two days. Probably trying to get away from her for a while. She talks a blue streak. Gave me a complete blow-by-blow of her health, her husband's health, their dog's health, what she had for breakfast this morning-English muffin with raisins, a little Sanka. Jesus. He probably goes gambling just to have some peace and quiet for a change."
"See?" Kristina said. "That's how marriage works. I bet there was a time when he told her he loved her, and couldn't be without her, and now he's reduced to playing blackjack to get away from the sound of her voice. That's what marriage is, Rick. The death of romance."
"That's not what marriage to me would be like," he said, circling her waist and kissing her neck. Kristina never missed a beat in her dusting.
"Two days," Tess complained, feeling awkward. "What do we do until then? I don't want to sit around La Casita, watching Esskay sleep."
"Look for Emmie," Rick said, still holding fast to Kristina, who continued to ignore him. "That's what you said you wanted to do in the first place. Got any ideas where to start?"
"In fact, I do," Tess said, eyeing the skeletons, which seemed to he laughing at her. "I think I'll see if the Duchess of Euphemism would like to take tea with me this afternoon."
Chapter 17
Marianna Barrett Conyers was in the garden behind her house when Tess returned to Alamo Heights early that afternoon. Given the trees and the high stone wall, the garden was as dark as the interior of the house. It seemed unlikely that the sun ever penetrated here. Yet Marianna wore a large hat and was carefully applying sunscreen to her face and hands. She sat at a wrought-iron table, an authentic version of the ones that had come back into style. A blue-rimmed pitcher of iced tea and matching glass completed the Martha Stewart perfection of the scene.
"It's one of the things I've done right, taking care of my skin," she volunteered, although Tess had asked for no explanation, had not yet even reintroduced herself. "I never sunbathed like the other girls."
Marianna held out her tube of Estée Lauder sunscreen to Tess, whose face was tanned and freckled from a summer's worth of rowing. Tess shook her head. Too little, too late. Although now that she was thirty, she probably should got serious about moisturizer. Not that Marianna's complexion was particularly impressive. Her pores were large, her color was uneven, and age spots had begun to creep along her jawline.
"You'll be sorry," she said. Marianna wasn't good at playfulness, and the warning sounded almost too ominous.
"Probably," Tess agreed. "Did Lollie Sterne sunbathe?"
If Marianna was startled by the question, nothing in her face betrayed this. She capped her Estée Lauder tube, then rubbed her hands together to absorb the extra lotion. When she was done, she patted the cushioned chair opposite her, inviting Tess to sit. Commanding her, really. Tess didn't like being directed by anyone, but she wanted Marianna to think she was in control of the situation, at least in the beginning. So she sat.
"You've been busy," Marianna said.
"Very," Tess agreed.
"How old are you? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?"
"I was thirty in August."
"Still young. Too young to know there are stories you will grow weary of telling. Especially when it's the only story anyone knows about you. Or cares about."
Tess smiled and nodded. She had no idea where Marianna was heading with this.
"I am a survivor. Not in the new sense of the word, which implies triumph over self-inflicted adversity, followed by public redemption in the chapel of some talk show host. I am a ‘survived by.'"
"Survived by whom?"
"No one, that's just it. I'm the one in the list at the end of the obituary. So-and-so is survived by. I'm the official mourner, and my past is as noisy as Marley's chains. I am Frank Conyers's widow, I am Lollie Sterne's best friend. That's the sum and total of who I am. People no longer remember that my father's people were related to William Barrett Travis, the commander at the Alamo. Distantly, but related nonetheless. They don't recall the things my father did for this city, how almost every building here has a foundation poured by his concrete company. There was a time when I would have given anything to he known as someone other than my father's daughter. Be careful what you wish for."
"By withdrawing from the world, you made it worse," Tess said. "You've frozen yourself in time. If you want to compare yourself to a Dickens character, try Miss Havisham."
Marianna shook her head impatiently.
"If you want to listen to my story, then you have to listen. Don't you know how many reporters have tried to get me to tell this to them? Usually at this time of year, too. Right before what they call the ‘anniversary.' As if I might be having a cake and a party. They called the first year, and the second. The fifth and the tenth, the fifteenth and the twentieth. It's not just the local media, either, but reporters from Dallas and Houston, and Texas Monthly. Unsolved Mysteries even showed up on my doorstep one time. This year, the twenty-first will probably be a little quieter than some. But someone will come by. Someone always does."
She stopped, her eyes fixed on some spot in the garden wall. Tess knew to leave the silence alone.