They hadn't even left Diamond's street when Tess asked: "How could you put up with that?"
"With what?"
"With beaner this and Mex that and the sneering way he called Guzman ‘Señor.' He was goading you the entire time we were there."
"Which is why I ignored him."
"You shouldn't let stuff like that go by," Tess said, thinking of how Jackie believed in confronting anyone, even prospective clients, who made the mistake of saying something racist in her presence. "It's like…letting someone litter, or pour toxic waste into the water system."
"Look, he's some old fart on a policeman's pension whose only hobby is killing weeds and trying to get lung cancer. My car probably costs more than he paid for his house. I win."
"As in, the one with the most toys, etc., etc."
"Most toys, most power. A person who really has power over you doesn't have to pull the kind of pennyante shit he was trying. We had to be polite to him because we thought he might have something for us. That's the up side to getting nothing. We don't owe him, and we don't have to go back."
Tess thought back to Diamond, how he had slobbered over Danny Boyd's mother, with her big blue eyes and blond hair. Danny had taken after his mother. A cute little boy, a rich man's son. Blond hair, blue eyes.
"I'm not so sure we came away empty-handed."
"What are you talking about?"
"Danny Boyd. He doesn't fit. He never fit. It's like trying to hammer the wrong jigsaw puzzle piece into place. Why do two convenience store robbers suddenly upgrade to a high-stakes kidnapping?"
"Because they had just killed three people in a botched robbery and they needed the money to get far away," Rick shot back.
"I thought of that. But they didn't ask for any money. They took a kid, then tried to give him back, and they were so broke they walked their check at the Pig Stand, whatever that is. You think we could get the original police report on the kidnapping? I want to check something out."
"Legally, we're entitled, but I bet the cops won't make it easy for us," Rick said. "As it happens, I now realize I know the ‘do-gooding little Mex' who represented Darden and Weeks. She's an attorney with a nonprofit, does environmental law now. And, no, she wasn't well-suited to criminal law, but she's the kind of analretentive Harvard grad who keeps her records forever. Chances are, she picked up a copy of the complaint, preparing to depose the nanny if it came to that. I know her pretty well."
"She still a friend, or did it end badly?"
"Darlin', she's ages too old for me." Rick smiled. "She's more of a mentor-mama figure to me than anything else. Besides, all my ex-girlfriends love me. It's the current one I can't keep happy."
It was dusk before the bell rang on the fax machine in Rick's office, a small but posh suite of rooms on the twentieth floor of a downtown office building. Tess stared out at San Antonio, watching the way the city began to glow at sundown. The sky almost seemed to part, the east going black while the west was still full of rosy clouds, the McAllister Freeway running between them like a dividing line. It was really a very pretty place in its own right, a lovely place of hills and old trees and gracious homes. There was nothing here to dislike, and much to admire. It was not, in the end, that different from Baltimore. A small big city, provincial and anxious, eager to please. Its only flaw was that it wasn't home, and she was so homesick.
She held Jimmy Ahern's The Green Glass in her hand, her thumb marking the page. In the end, the proof had been in the padding. All those little details that he had thrown in so frenetically, trying to puff the book up to full-length. How had the cops missed the motive buried there? Not that it would matter, unless she was right about this, too. She needed A plus B before she could get to C.
At the high trill of the fax line, she turned and watched two pages peel off the machine, falling to the floor where they rolled and shimmered like shiny snakes. When she didn't move Rick leaned over and picked them up, handing them to her facedown so she could have the first look.
"Well?" he asked as she scanned the old report.
"The Boyds lived on Shook Avenue."
"So your hunch was wrong."
"My hunch was dead-on," she said, looking up with a victorious grin. "The Boyds lived on Shook, but the kidnappers grabbed Danny on Contour Drive, less than a block from Gus Sterne's house on Hermosa. A little blond boy, out with his nanny, the same age and description as Clay Sterne, just outside the Sterne house. Sure, the Boyds never got a ransom demand. Because Gus Sterne did. And never told anyone."
Rick rubbed his eyes. "I'm totally lost," he confessed. "Why did Darden and Weeks have it in for this one family?"
"They didn't. They took Clay because Gus Sterne said he would pay them to kill Lollie and then reneged on the deal. They were just trying to get him to pay up. And if they had taken the right kid, things might have worked out differently all around."
Chapter 25
They left a message for Al Guzman to meet them at the Liberty Bar, where Rick and Kris were to have dinner.
"If she shows," he said glumly, parking next to a lopsided old house that made the Tower of Pisa look stable. But once inside, Tess felt like Brigham Young regarding Utah. The long old-fashioned bar, the worn wooden floors, the smell of fresh-baked bread, the decadent chocolate cake beckoning to her from a sideboard-it was at once homey yet untamed, a place to seek comfort or adventure, depending on one's mood.
"Do you come here a lot?"
"All the time." He looked wistful. "Kris and I have had some of our best fights here."
They took a seat in one of the neon outlined windows overlooking the street. Older ghosts and goblins roamed the sidewalks here, and many of them had spilled into the bar. A devil brandished his pitchfork at a curvy vampire, while a doleful-looking man with an accordion was walking around in huge rubber chicken feet.
"Strange costume," Tess said.
"Old story," Rick said. "Suffice to say, a woman who dances with the man with chicken feet will live to regret it."
The waiter, dressed as a safari-bound Groucho Marx, greeted Rick with a familiar smile and a curious look for the woman who was not Kristina. He left them with fresh bread as they studied the specials on the menu. Pork chops, meat loaf, pasta, eggplant puree on parmesan toast, and-she couldn't help laughing at this-a "Maryland-style" crabcake that was billed as one of the house specialties. No crab for her, Maryland-style or otherwise. But everything else looked wonderful. Everything. Tess, whose Irish roots often had to fight to be heard over the domineering Weinstein genes, had found her inner Molly Bloom. Yes, her taste buds sang out. Yes, yes, yes.
She was not so far gone in her own appetites that she didn't notice how glum Rick still looked.
"Not to pry-" she began.
"You?" But she had gotten a smile out of him. "You're a professional pryer."
"It's just that you and Kristina bicker all the time, and you both seem to enjoy it immensely. So how did you end up having a fight-fight?" She was feeling very warm and wise. Now that she had all but solved the triple murders, she was ready to tackle anything. She could see herself on the radio, dispensing brisk, no-nonsense advice about love and marriage, or telling people how to manage their stock portfolios, repair their cars, build small nuclear weapons with household items.
"Honestly, I don't have a clue. It started out about there being no two percent in my fridge, and the next thing I know, she's slamming doors and saying I'm not serious about our relationship."